Abstract
Abstract Dr. McAllister’s translational research group studies breast cancer as a systemic disease with an emphasis on the role of immune fitness in disease control and response to therapy. In this education session, Dr. McAllister will introduce the concept of “immunological age”. She will discuss her team’s ongoing efforts to understand how age sets the stage for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) progression and response to immune checkpoint blockade therapy. Her team was the first to report that bone marrow derived immune cells from 8–10-week-old young mice promote more aggressive TNBC growth when transferred to 12–15-month-old aged mice (Marsh, et al., Cancer Research, 2016). They subsequently identified cellular and molecular mechanisms that promote aggressive disease, as typically observed in younger individuals. Likewise, her group was the first to report that immune checkpoint blockade therapy is less effective in older mice with TNBC and discovered a treatment strategy that improved outcomes in pre-clinical TNBC models (Sceneay, et al., Cancer Discovery, 2019). The same tumor cellular and molecular pathways that stratified by age in their pre-clinical models also defined age-stratified differences between younger (under 40) and older (over 65) TNBC patients in the METABRIC dataset. She will present her team’s new work on functional aspects of immunological age in TNBC and the ongoing efforts of the Older Women with Breast Cancer Research and Treatment Team at the Dana-Farber/Brigham Cancer Center. Ultimately, she and her team wish to eliminate age- and race-based disparities in breast cancer outcomes. Citation Format: Sandra McAllister. Effects of age on the tumor microenvironment [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2022 Dec 6-10; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(5 Suppl):Abstract nr ED9-3.
Published Version
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