Dr Takanori Kitamura and his team are investigating a type of immune cell called a macrophage. They think that macrophages can help ductal carcinoma in situ to progress, so they’re trying to work out why. They want to know if inhibiting these macrophages could be an effective therapy to prevent this type of cancer from becoming invasive.
In this section
What's the challenge?
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is an early form of breast cancer that begins in the lining of the milk ducts of the breast. At this stage, they haven’t started growing into the surrounding breast tissue, and a DCIS diagnosis usually has good outcomes.
If left untreated, DCIS can sometimes progress to invasive breast cancer. Treatment usually involves breast conserving surgery and a round of radiotherapy to remove only the affected area of the breast. In most cases however, DCIS will not progress. And in these cases these low-risk tumours can receive over-treatment that may reduce quality of life.
So, we urgently need new ways to predict which DCIS tumours are likely to progress and develop better treatments for those that are high-risk.
Our research will help us understand how the immune system is involved in DCIS progression. This could help us predict which DCIS tumours are likely to become invasive. And it could pave the way for the development of new treatments to prevent progression, ultimately improving outcomes and quality of life.
Dr Takanori Kitamura
Lead researcher
What’s the science behind this project?
Takanori and his team recently found a type of immune cell called macrophages in the tumours of people with progressive DCIS. They also found a similar type of macrophage in mice with DCIS that may help DCIS to become invasive. Now, the researchers want to know why.
The team will use cutting-edge technology to understand what genes these macrophages have and which proteins they make. This knowledge will help us understand how they communicate with DCIS cells and other non-cancer cells to help DCIS progress.
Then they’ll investigate mini tumours in the lab, where they’ll study how proteins made by macrophages impact DCIS cells to become invasive.
Finally, they will test if inhibiting these proteins is an effective treatment to prevent DCIS progression. To do this they’ll study mice with DCIS.
What difference will this project make?
This project could help us understand why some DCIS tumours become invasive. And it could lead to the development of new drugs to prevent progression.
The findings from this research may give us new predictive biomarkers – helping us identify high-risk patients that should receive preventative treatment. And allowing low-risk patients to avoid therapies that could reduce their quality of life.
How many people could this project help?
This could help the 7,000 people who are diagnosed with DCIS each year in the UK.
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