Events

Abstract: The interaction of tumor cells with stroma cells and stromal components not only promotes tumor progression and metastasis, but also influences tumor cell responses to chemotherapy, endocrine therapy and targeted agents. As a consequence, there is an urgent need to identify strategies to efficiently target these interaction pathways for the prevention or suppression of metastatic disease and to overcome treatment-resistant tumor progression in advanced breast cancer.

This talk will focus on the tumor-stroma crosstalk pathways underpinning the striking heterogeneity between different breast cancers in their ability to recruit and activate a pro-tumorigenic stroma. In particular (a) the mechanisms involved in the activation of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), (b) the role of activated pericytes in promoting metastatic dissemination, and (c) the mechanisms by which a productive microenvironmental niche is initiated at metastatic sites.

Biography: Professor Clare Isacke studied for her BA in Biochemistry and DPhil in Developmental Biology with John Heath at the University of Oxford. She then moved to Tony Hunter's laboratory at the Salk Institute in San Diego to work on growth factor receptor signalling as a postdoctoral fellow. On returning to England, she started her own research laboratory first in the Department of Biochemistry and then in the Department of Biology at Imperial College London. She was appointed Professor of Molecular Cell Biology in 2000.

In 2001, Professor Isacke moved to the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London to take up an appointment as Professor of Molecular Cell Biology in the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre. In 2004, Professor Isacke was appointed Deputy Director of the Centre and from 2011–2013 she was the Interim Director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Centre and the Interim Head of the Division of Breast Cancer Research. In 2013 she was appointed Academic Dean at the ICR and in 2016 elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci). Outside the ICR, Clare chairs the CRUK New Investigator Awards committee, is a member of CRUK Science Committee and is on the scientific advisory board for the CRUK Manchester Centre and the Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Translational Medicine (WCMTM) in Sweden.