Hannah Garner, PhD

Breast cancer is the second most deadly cancer for women in the U.S. and Canada. This is mainly because some kinds of breast cancer are aggressive and spread to other organs, which makes them very difficult to treat. However, new research has shown that some cells that are part of the immune system are very important in cancer spread, opening the door for new treatments. My previous work found that breast cancer changes the way that these immune cells develop and how they work. These changes help cancer spread. This project will study how this happens. We will use advanced technologies and laboratory models that recreate many aspects of breast cancer. This will allow us to understand how tumors change the immune system.  We will study important cells of the immune system at different stages of their development to understand how they are changed by breast cancer. We will study how breast cancer changes the bone marrow, where these cells form. We will also study samples of cancer and immune cells collected from breast cancer patients at hospitals. This will let us link our lab findings with real-world cases to make sure that our research will help patients.  Finally, our project will test new ways to stop the immune system from helping cancer spread. This may help prevent or treat the aggressive types of breast cancer and help more patients to survive this disease.