Dr Ralitsa Madsen
University of Glasgow
Awarded: £150,000
The challenge
Primary breast angiosarcoma (PBA) is a very rare but aggressive cancer that develops in the cells lining blood vessels in the breast. Unlike most breast cancers, PBA tends to affect younger people.
To research a cancer effectively, scientists need ways to grow it and study it in the lab. Cell models, where cancer cells are grown in a dish, are often the starting point for understanding how a disease develops and for testing potential new treatments.
Because PBA is so rare, researchers don’t yet have an accurate cell model to work with. This limits what we know about how the cancer develops, making it hard to diagnose and test potential PBA treatments.
How will this project tackle this challenge?
Dr Ralitsa Madsen at the CRUK Scotland Institute and University of Glasgow will supervise PhD student, Nathan O’Donnell, to create the first laboratory model of PBA. They will do this by transforming laboratory-grown stem cells, cells that can change into any type of cell in the body, into PBA cells, thus creating a renewable source for researchers to study. They will also look at differences between these cancerous PBA cells and normal healthy cells, which could help us to spot the disease earlier.
The PhD student will also test combinations of existing drugs to identify potential new treatment approaches. A patient advocate will work with the team throughout the project to help ensure the research remains relevant to people affected by sarcoma. The team is also collaborating closely with Prof. Alex Toker (Harvard Medical School) and Prof Robin Jones (Head of the Sarcoma Unit, Royal Marsden), together they will help to ensure the new cell-based model is accurate.
What this means for people affected by sarcoma
This research could lead to earlier diagnosis and support the development of more effective treatments for PBA. The work will also lay the foundations for future patient-derived sarcoma models, supporting wider sarcoma research and drug discovery.
