An international team headed by John Stagg received a $2.5M grant from the TRANSCAN-3 network to improve triple negative breast cancer treatment.

Sponsored by the European Commission, this transnational cooperative network brings together 31 funding organizations from 20 countries, including Canada through the Canadian Institute of Health Research, and supports translational cancer research.

The international research consortium coordinated by John Stagg was one of 20 lucky proposals to receive significant funding as part of the Next generation cancer immunotherapy: targeting the tumour microenvironment call for proposals.

At the heart of this international collaboration are Morag Park, Director of the Rosalind and Morris Goodman Cancer Institute from McGill University and specialists from the Jules Bordet Institute and the Ghent University in Belgium, the Institut Curie in Paris and the University Cancer Centre Frankfurt-Marburg in Germany.

Through the MAGNOLIA project, a team of scientists will map the adaptation of triple negative breast cancer microenvironments to immunotherapy.

The project’s goal? To elucidate within the cancer’s spatial architecture the main cellular interactions that determine the behaviour of this disease and its resistance to immunotherapy.

As of today, 15% to 20% of all breast cancers are triple negative. It has a high recurrence rate, a high potential for metastasis and is resistant to conventional treatments. This means an unfavourable prognosis and low survival rates.