Metastasis is responsible for almost all breast cancer-related mortalities. Patients with oestrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, the most common type of breast cancer, are at risk of developing metastatic disease for years or even decades after diagnosis. Crucially, we do not know who is at risk of this late metastatic relapse or how we would prevent or treat it. Underlying these late recurrences is the ability of disseminated tumour cells (DTCs) to lie in a dormant, therapy-resistant state for extended periods of time at the secondary sites until they are triggered to reawaken, with the microenvironment at the metastatic site key in controlling both the survival of dormant tumour cells and their subsequent outgrowth.

The Turrell laboratory focusses on the microenvironmental control of tumour progression, dormancy and metastasis in ER+ breast cancer. Previous work characterised syngeneic ER+ breast cancer models and demonstrated that an aged or fibrotic lung supports rapid metastatic outgrowth of the DTCs, uncovering a key role for PDGF-C in ER+ breast cancer metastasis. We aim to delineate the mechanisms of DTC-niche crosstalk and specifically how age-related changes affect ER+ breast cancer metastasis. The overall goals are to better understand which patients are at higher risk of recurrence and to uncover novel therapeutic strategies to limit metastatic relapse in ER+ breast cancer.

A further aim of our research is to employ ER+ syngeneic models to study tumour-immune interactions and establish how an ageing immune system affects the tumour immune microenvironment and response to therapy in this breast cancer subtype, with the ultimate goal of identifying novel immunotherapy strategies and improving treatment options for the patients.