March 20, 2023
Christy Hagan, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and member of The University of Kansas Cancer Center’s Cancer Biology program, has received a $100,000 grant from the Breast Cancer Alliance. Funding from the grant will allow Dr. Hagan to build on her previous work studying the connection between progesterone and cancer’s ability to evade the immune system.
Tumor cells release signals that are recognized by the immune system. The body’s immune system does an extraordinary job catching and destroying these abnormal cells. Occasionally, cancer cells do elude the immune system. Dr. Hagan and her team are exploring how these cancer cells hide from the immune system, and what mechanisms they use to suppress these danger signals.
“Understanding how cancer cells turn these signals off is the first step towards designing drugs that prevent cancer cells from escaping the watchful eye of the immune system,” Dr. Hagan said. “In breast cancer, we propose that a hormone, progesterone, helps breast cancer cells hide from the immune system.”
Dr. Hagan’s team has shown that the progesterone receptor can turn off some of the danger signals the immune system relies on to recognize early tumors. Next, researchers will block the progesterone receptor, alerting the immune system to the presence of early breast tumors.
“Thanks to support from the Breast Cancer Alliance, we can continue our work examining the role of progesterone in breast cancer, and potentially identify a novel mechanism for preventing and treating breast cancer,” Dr. Hagan said.