Uni teams share £1 million award for work to tackle dormant breast cancer

The money from the Patricia Swannell appeal aims to boost understanding of why, years after remission, certain cancer cells awake from a dormant state.

Half the award will go to professor Penelope Ottewell’s Sheffield research team’s investigation into gene therapy-based to stop dormant breast cancer cells from waking.

The remainder will aid Dr Frances Turrell and her team at Manchester to examine the role macrophage immune cells in reawakening dormant breast cancer cells in the lung.

Although the majority of breast cancer does not return after treatment, breast cancer cells can emerge from their dormant state and circulate in the bloodstream. 

This can then result in the development of tumours elsewhere in the body as secondary (metastatic) breast cancer. 

It is estimated that 55,000 women are diagnosed with the disease annually and that more than 60,000 people in the UK are living with incurable secondary breast cancer. 

Previously Ottewell’s team determined that those breast cancer cells which spread to bone made the protein IL-1β – an element absent from those cells that did not penetrate bone. Inhibiting IL-1β prevented dormant cells awakening and growing there.

This inspired further research into the possibility of bone cells being targeted to make proteins able to tackle cancer growth.

Turrell’s earlier work examined how, areas of aged or damaged lung could trigger dormant cells, prompting work into how those cells communicate with macrophages and how the latter can be employed to prevent cell awakening. 

The charity funding the research projects was set up in 2022 by sufferer Patricia Swannell,whose condition lay dormant after primary breast cancer treatment in 2007 until she was diagnosed with secondary breast cancer in 2021, before dying in 2023.

To date, the fund inspired by Swannell and husband Robert has raised £1.4 million towards research into breast cancer.

Said Robert Swannell: “When Patricia and I embarked on this mission we were astonished to find that so little was known about the science of dormancy and late recurrence in secondary breast cancer; and yet this disease, which is currently incurable, kills thousands of women in the UK each year.

“In raising the research funds, Patricia and I knew that this was not going to be a quick result, but we hoped to make positive steps up a long ladder to understanding better this disease and act as a catalyst and pathfinder for yet more research at greater scale, leading to earlier detection, better treatments and, ultimately, a cure. 

“It is great to see the funds now allocated and the work started. Patricia would be so delighted that a seed has been firmly planted.”

Pic: National Cancer Institute