Get to know your neighbours: recording the conversations between cancer cells and their niche in tumour initiation

Patients with chronic fibroinflammatory diseases often develop cancer. While screening in some of these high-risk patients has improved early cancer detection and subsequent survival, for most, screening uncovers that they have established malignant disease for which treatment options are severely limited.

The early events in tumour initiation remain a black box - why are patients with chronic tissue fibrosis and inflammation more prone to develop cancer? The interactions between cancer cells and stromal and immune cells are often transient and while single cell sequencing has identified the emergence of new populations of supporting cells within tumours it is difficult to say with certainty that they have 1. interacted with cancer cells and 2. determine whether their phenotype has been influenced by this close spatial arrangement.

In this project we will combine in vivo models of tumour initiation with cutting edge methods in near-neighbour cellular labelling (in collaboration with Prof Sally Lowell, IRR) to record the interactions between cancer cells and their microenvironment. By combining this approach with single cell and ultrahigh-plex spatial imaging we will map how tumour cells themselves pattern local stromal and immune cells during tumour initiation with the expectation we can uncouple this cellular relationship.