Better understanding of how breast tumour metastases occur for their prevention

Ana Luisa Correia

Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal

Breast cancer is the most prevalent tumour in women. According to the World Health Organisation, 2.3 million cases were diagnosed in 2022 and 670,000 deaths from the disease were recorded. This mortality is almost exclusively attributable to metastases. In many cases, years or even decades after the primary breast tumour was diagnosed, a metastasis appears in a distant organ.

During this time, cancer cells that spread throughout the body enter a dormant state until they adapt to the specific microenvironment of the organ they have reached and become active, generating a new metastatic tumour growth. Since metastatic relapse remains largely incurable, it is crucial to thoroughly understand the process that the disseminated tumour cell undergoes and the role that microenvironments play in its activation.

In this regard, researchers in this project will map the composition and spatiotemporal dynamics of the microenvironments that enable disseminated breast tumour cells to emerge from dormancy and into metastases. To achieve this, they will focus on the two organs where breast metastasis is most common: liver and bone. The knowledge gained will pave the way for the development of new drugs to prevent the process of metastasis formation.

• Neta Erez, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Spatiotemporal dynamics of organ-specific microenvironments in breast cancer metastasis

€997,610.00

*Award-winning project in collaboration with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia