The GCI’s Hannah Garner Awarded V Foundation Grant for Metastatic Breast Cancer Research

Hannah Garner, Ph.D., Principal Investigator at the Rosalind and Morris goodman Cancer Institute (GCI) and Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, has been awarded a highly competitive grant from the V Foundation for Cancer Research. This award, valued at $600,000 USD, will support her research on inflammation in breast cancer through a project entitled “The systemic impact of breast cancer: understanding and reprogramming tumour-driven pro-metastatic evolution of myeloid cells.”

The V foundation’s mission is to support the best cancer scientists in their quest to improve the lives of people with cancer. Founded in 1993 by ESPN and ESPN broadcaster Jim Valvano, the V foundations is one of the most respected organizations dedicated to funding cancer research. Since its inception, the V Foundation has awarded nearly $400 million in cancer research grants. This funding supports studies that span all cancer types, at every stage of development, for both children and adults. The foundation is uniquely committed to bold, innovative projects that may otherwise struggle to find funding but have the potential to change the way cancer is understood and treated.

Prof. Garner’s work embodies the high-impact, transformative research that the V foundation is committed to advancing. Her project aims to uncover how breast cancer cells reprogram immune cells to drive metastasis, the lethal spread of cancer to distant organs. Previous work from Prof. Garner and others has shown that neutrophils, a specialized type of immune cell, play a critical role in driving breast cancer metastasis when they are reprogrammed by systemic inflammation. Her current research aims to understand how different breast cancer mutations drive neutrophil reprogramming throughout their lifespan, the functional consequences of this neutrophil reprogramming, and how to reverse this process to improve patient outcomes.

By combing multiple advanced ‘omics’ technologies, this work will map the diverse changes that breast cancer inflammation induces in neutrophils. In addition to better understanding how these changes drive metastasis, her findings could reveal new therapeutic targets and help identify strategies to disrupt cancer progression. The potential impact of this research is profound, and its promise for cancer patients is underscored by the V foundation’s decision to award the project competitive grant funding.

With the support of the V foundation, Prof. Garner’s work will bridge critical gaps in our understanding of the link between breast cancer inflammation and metastasis and bring us closer to the #knowledgetocure.

Hannah Garner | Principal Investigators | Goodman Cancer Institute