Understanding and Targeting Breast Cancer Metastasis Initiating Circulating Tumor Cells and Niches

ABSTRACT

One of the biggest challenges in breast cancer is how to prevent and treat metastasis. Ourmain goal is to identify cell intrinsic and extrinsic metastasis-promoting mechanisms anddevelop novel therapeutics for targeting metastasis. We aims to investigate the molecular andphysical properties of metastasis-initiating circulating tumor cells (CTCs), the uniqueproperties of metastasis-supporting niches, and the mechanism of immune evasion in CTCs. Thispast year is the first year of this funding award and the COVID-19 pandemic significantlyimpacted our research activities in a negative way. Despite the challenges and unusualcircumstances, we still made progress in analyzing CTC heterogeneity in morphology andtranscriptomes at the single cell level in our existing patient-derived CTC lines,optimization of the spatial transcriptomic profiling protocols for PDX tissues, as well asinvestigation of the mechanisms of hypoxia-mediated inhibition of CTC intrinsic interferonand antigen presentation signals.