The stroma, comprising of cells and structures that surround a tumour, plays a significant role in a cancer’s behaviour and response to treatment. Cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are a significant component of the stroma and have been shown to be functionally heterogenous. This heterogeneity is present between cells, different tumours and across different cancers. The stromal team aims to investigate the role of CAFs in tumour progression using a combined approach of in vitro, in vivo and computational methods.    

Dr Travis Ruan is investigating the mechanisms driving stromal-immune interaction and identify novel drug targets using high-throughput screening (in collaboration with Professor Kaylene Simpson), CRISPR editing, animal models of breast cancer and cell-based assays.  

Dr Julia Chen leads the investigation of CAFs in breast cancer as part of her PhD. Building on single cell work generated by Dr Sunny Wu, Dr Chen is utilising single cell technologies and multi-IF spatial technologies to resolve CAF heterogeneity and interactions in breast cancer patients. 

Dr Jeremy Mo is leading the pan-CAF project, investigating the differences between CAFs from breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers as part of his PhD. Single-cell technology will allow for individual CAFs and their features to be studied, while spatial techniques will provide insights by mapping these CAFs into a tissue context.

Dr Hanyun Zhang leads the computational analysis of the stromal immunology project. Dr Zhang applies her extensive experience on deep-learning-based cell identification and spatial statistics for deconvolving the immune cell distribution within the tumour microenvironment to the spatial datasets generated in this project

Cecilia Chang supports the CAF team through the application of her extensive experience with in vitro and in vivo research techniques.