The Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award, in Partnership with Pelotonia and the AACR is intended to fund innovative research projects in breast and gynecologic cancers and to invest in the next generation of female early-stage scientists domestically and globally. The aim of this award is to foster innovation in the understanding, prevention, interception, early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of breast and gynecologic cancers with the goal of eliminating cancer health disparities and improving patient outcomes.

2024 grantees

Research 

Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors have revolutionized the treatment landscape for multiple cancer types, including High Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma (HGSOC). While many aspects of genetic and non-genetic heterogeneity have been investigated, our understanding of how variability in drug distribution affects therapeutic response remains limited. Preliminary findings demonstrated that PARP inhibitor distribution is highly heterogeneous within both patient explant and cell line models, and this heterogeneity is closely linked to drug response. Dr. Fets plans to use proteomics and CRISPR screening to elucidate the molecular drivers underlying variability in drug distribution to better understand mechanisms of resistance. These findings may inform the development of biomarker-based personalized therapeutic approaches for PARP inhibitors in HGSOC and other homologous recombination-deficient cancer types such as breast and prostate.

Biography 

Dr. Fets received her undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge, specializing in pharmacology. She then completed her doctoral degree at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, focusing on signal transduction in cell motility. During her postdoctoral training at the Francis Crick Institute, she shifted her focus to cancer metabolism and drug mechanisms of action. Currently, she is a Programme Leader Track Group Leader and MRC Investigator at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences, where she established the Drug Transport and Tumour Metabolism lab in 2019. 

Acknowledgment of Support

“It is a huge honor to receive the 2024 Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award, in partnership with Pelotonia and AACR. This recognition will increase visibility of the lab internationally and provide a springboard for our work in women’s cancers, particularly within the ovarian carcinoma space.”

Research 

Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) is a breast cancer subtype that is treated with a combination of chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the effectiveness of this combination therapy varies widely, benefitting only 5-60% of patients, depending on the stage of the disease. Recently, the gut microbiome was shown to impact response to immune checkpoint inhibitors by suppressing repulsive guidance molecule b (RGMb) on CD8 T cells, enhancing responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors in mouse breast cancer models. Dr. Gazzaniga aims to 1) investigate the gut microbiome, diet, and RGMb as biomarkers, 2) evaluate the efficacy of RGMb blockade with immune checkpoint inhibitors in preclinical breast cancer models with patient microbiomes, and 3) elucidate the mechanisms by which this combination therapy promotes response in a preclinical TNBC model.

Biography 

Dr. Gazzaniga majored in biology at Dartmouth College and received her doctoral degree in biomedical sciences from the University of California, San Francisco, studying telomerase in CD4 T cells and breast cancer cells. Her postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School, in collaboration with Dr. Joon Seok Park, led to the discovery that gut bacteria suppress PD-L2 and RGMb to promote anti-tumor immunity.  She is currently an Assistant Professor of Pathology in the Molecular Pathology Unit and Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Acknowledgment of Support

“During my postdoctoral work, I discovered a microbiome-dependent mechanism that promotes anti-tumor immunity. The Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award, in partnership with Pelotonia & AACR enables me to collaborate with breast cancer oncologists and pathologists at my institution to investigate how we can harness this mechanism to overcome microbiome-dependent resistance to immunotherapy in triple negative breast cancer.”

Research 

Despite the success of immune checkpoint blockade in various cancers, breast cancers have shown limited responses, potentially due to defective antigen-presenting cells (APCs). Dr. Reddy’s research team demonstrated that combining CD40 agonists with Flt3 ligand and anthracycline chemotherapy reversed APC defects and controlled triple-negative breast cancer in mouse models. This led to the first-in-human clinical trial using this combination therapy in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. Preclinical studies from Dr. Reddy’s team revealed increased intra-tumoral infiltration of cDC1 cells, inflammatory macrophages, and CD8 T cells, enhancing anti-tumor responses. Dr. Reddy plans to investigate the impact of CD40 agonist therapy on the myeloid-CD8 T cell axis and to determine how targeting both myeloid cells and Tregs may restore effective adaptive immunity.

Biography 

Dr. Reddy earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard, completed medical training at UCLA, and a fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center. She joined UT Southwestern in 2019 as an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine. A translational investigator and clinical trialist, she is dedicated to improving outcomes for breast cancer patients through immunotherapy. Her research focuses on high-risk cancers such as triple-negative breast cancer, using a “bedside to bench and back” approach. This strategy involves studying patient samples, testing novel treatment combinations in the lab, and translating findings into clinical trials.

Acknowledgment of Support

“Receiving the Victoria’s Secret Global Fund Career Development Award, in partnership with Pelotonia & AACR will enable me to investigate strategies to overcome immune resistance in triple-negative breast cancer. This support will help me transition to an independent physician-scientist and form the foundation for developing rational treatment combinations that will be translated to patients.”

Research 

Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPi) are FDA-approved for the treatment of BRCA-mutant cancers. However, it is becoming evident that not all BRCA-mutant cancer patients have a promising outcome with PARPi. The basis of this variable clinical response remains unclear. Through an arrayed CRISPR-Cas 9 approach, Dr. Verma found that loss of a metabolic enzyme enhances PARPi sensitivity in BRCA-mutant cancers. She seeks to examine the mechanistic basis of this observation. 

Biography 

Dr. Verma completed her doctorate in Biochemistry from the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, India. She pursued her postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania, uncovering a PAR-dependent nucleosome sliding enzyme, ALC1 (Amplified in Liver Cancer 1), as a new drug target for BRCA-mutant cancers.  Currently, she is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine. Her research group integrates several functional genomics tools to define DNA repair and replication pathways that dictate cancer etiology and therapeutic responses in breast and ovarian cancers.

Acknowledgment of Support

“The support from this grant will enable my research group to develop a new biomarker platform for PARP inhibitor responses in breast and ovarian cancers. The support will also be instrumental in generating foundational data to procure future federal funding.”

2023 Grantees

Research

The study of 3D genome organization in cancer offers a novel space to identify vulnerabilities and to develop breakthrough therapies in cancers of the uterus and ovaries. Genetic and transcriptional analyses in gynecologic carcinomas demonstrated disruption of the architectural proteins CTCF and BORIS that are known to regulate the 3D genome. Dr. Johnstone and her research group are set to use cellular models to query the impact of architectural protein alteration in gynecologic tumors. They hypothesize that these alterations mis-regulate tumor cells by reshaping genome structure to facilitate tumor-promoting gene activity. They plan to generate in vitro models of CTCF and BORIS disruption in cancer cells and define how these changes alter protein binding, genome structure and tumor cell state. Additionally, they are set to perform a CRISPR-screen to identify associated vulnerabilities to identify therapeutic pathways that can be targeted in these tumors.

Biography

Dr. Johnstone received her bachelor’s degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology with honors from the University of Chicago. She completed her doctorate in Genetics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Following her clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, she pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the same institution. She joined the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in 2021 and is currently an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and Associate Member of the Broad Institute. She is also an attending pathologist in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Women’s and Perinatal Pathology group. 

Acknowledgement of Support

“This award represents some of my first funding to study malignancies of the female gynecologic tract.  While I routinely diagnose these tumors clinically, I have not yet studied ovarian or endometrial 3D genomes in my lab, and I am grateful to have this critical support for our early investigations.”

Research

Women who are overweight and obese have an increased breast cancer risk, poorer prognosis, and an approximately 30% increased risk of cancer recurrence and death compared to normal-weight women. To design more targeted and effective therapies, cellular drivers that promote cancer in the context of obesity need to be identified. Adipocyte progenitors undergo adipogenesis and increase fat mass during obesity. Studying the mouse mammary gland, Dr. Joshi first uncovered a capacity of adipocyte progenitors to generate epithelial cells during tissue growth. She and her team seek to elucidate the contribution of adipocyte progenitors in shaping a pro-tumorigenic microenvironment in obesity. Using mouse models of obesity, and manipulation of breast cancer and adipocyte lineage, they plan to investigate obesity effects on mammary adipocyte progenitor cell state and the functional role of this lineage in mammary cancer.

Biography

Dr. Joshi received her doctorate from the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. She is currently an assistant professor and principal investigator in the Department of Biological Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. Research in her lab focuses on deciphering the role of stem/progenitor cells and microenvironment mechanisms in tissue regeneration and cancer. In particular, her work is centered on identifying the cellular links between  breast cancer, hormones, and obesity. 

Acknowledgement of Support

“I am truly grateful and honored to receive the 2023 Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award, in Partnership with Pelotonia & AACR. This funding is vital to support my career development and fuel research in my lab that will advance our understanding of excess adiposity-driven breast cancer in the midst of a growing global obesity epidemic.”

Research

Over 85% of patients with ovarian cancer develop tumor resistance to standard platinum-based chemotherapy and die within 5 years of diagnosis. To identify targets for overcoming platinum resistance, Dr. Mullen and her lab performed a high-throughput screen. Knockdown of the top candidate, COP9 signalosome complex subunit 6 (COPS6), increased cisplatin-induced DNA damage and platinum sensitivity up to six-fold in ovarian cancer cells. Further, COPS6 transcript levels were noted to be higher in platinum resistant patient tumors. Given the promise of COPS6 inhibition to overcome platinum resistance, Dr. Mullen and her group plan to 1) determine the contribution of COPS6 to platinum resistance in ovarian cancer and to 2) define the mechanisms by which COPS6 promotes platinum resistance.

Biography

Dr. Mullen received her bachelor’s degree from The University of Notre Dame and her medical degree with a distinction in research from Saint Louis University. She then completed her obstetrics and gynecology residency and gynecologic oncology fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where she medically and surgically treats patients with gynecologic cancers. Her research is focused on targeting DNA damage response to establish novel biomarkers and therapies to identify and overcome platinum chemotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer.

Acknowledgement of Support

“It is an honor to be recognized amongst such esteemed and established researchers. My ultimate goal is to improve the outcomes of women with ovarian cancer through the development of novel targeted therapies. This Career Development Award provides the resources, collaborations, and recognition necessary to work towards this goal.”

Research

Breast cancer brain metastases (BCBM) of triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) are aggressive, have poor prognoses, and lack effective therapies. Therefore, identifying novel druggable targets in TNBC BCBM is a critical task. RET receptor tyrosine kinase is aberrantly activated in lung and thyroid cancers, and treatment with FDA-approved RET inhibitors potently reduces brain metastases in these cancer types. However, the role of RET in mediating BCBM and efficacy of RET inhibitors in TNBC BCBM is unknown. Dr. Regua’s preliminary data suggest that RET activity is preferentially enhanced in BCBM compared to primary breast tumors and is correlated with shortened time to develop BCBM. Treatment of brain-metastatic breast cancer cells with RET inhibitors significantly reduced cell viability, suggesting that RET inhibitors can target TNBC BCBM. In this project, she aims to focus on investigating the role of RET in BCBM and determining the therapeutic potential of pharmacological RET inhibition in BCBM.

Biography

Dr. Regua received her doctorate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Cancer Biology at the Wake Forest School of Medicine, where she focused on characterizing a novel and druggable signaling crosstalk in triple-negative and HER2-positive breast cancers. Dr. Regua is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Her research is focused on identifying actionable targets in breast cancer brain metastases.

Acknowledgement of Support

“I am honored to receive this award from the AACR. This award provides me with the opportunity to investigate a novel therapeutic target in breast cancer brain metastases, with the ultimate goal of improving therapeutic intervention for patients with metastatic breast cancers.”

Research

Targeted therapies have revolutionized the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer patients. Recently, a promising antibody-drug conjugate, trastuzumab-deruxtecan (T-DXd), has shown impressive results in HER2-positive and, unexpectedly, HER2-low and negative cancers. Dr. Ruiz-Saenz and her team plan to address how tumor-specific glycosylation, a largely understudied field in cancer, impacts the efficacy of T-DXd using 3D breast cancer spheroids, functional assays, advanced 3D live-microscopy, and co-culture systems. The proposed research holds the potential to reveal new glycan-based biomarkers of response to T-DXd and open new directions in the development of glycan-specific therapeutics.

Biography

Dr. Ruiz-Saenz received her doctorate in molecular biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid and completed her postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2019, she established her research group as an assistant professor at the Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands, with the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Program and Dutch Research Council. She currently leads the Cancer Therapies Resistance Lab at CIC bioGUNE in Spain. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms regulating the efficacy of targeted therapies in HER2-amplified breast cancer.

Acknowledgment of Support

“I am extremely honored to receive the 2023 Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award. This award supports a line of research with the potential of setting new paradigms in the treatment of breast cancer and provides a solid foundation for my scientific career development as an independent researcher.”

2022 Grantees

Research

Gynecological cancers have limited treatment options leading to poor patient outcomes. Dr. McDermott and her lab have discovered that CLDN16 is highly expressed in multiple human malignancies including ovarian and endometrial cancers while having limited expression in normal human tissues, making it an attractive target for the development of an Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC). Under this grant, an ADC consisting of a humanized anti-CLDN6 monoclonal antibody coupled to MMAE via a cleavable linker will be generated and the in vivo efficacy of the ADC will be characterized in multiple preclinical models of cancer. Development of a novel CLDN16-ADC and companion diagnostic represent a large step forward in assessing the potential of CLDN16 as a target in gynecological cancers and is a critical step toward testing the clinical efficacy of a CLDN16-based ADC in patients with CLDN16 positive ovarian and endometrial cancers.

Biography

Dr. Martina McDermott received her PhD from Dublin City University, Ireland and then completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Carolina, Columbia SC. She focused on understanding and overcoming resistance to targeted therapies in breast cancer. She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the David Geffen Department of Medicine at UCLA where she works to discover and develop novel targeted therapies for cancers.

Acknowledgement of Support

I am honored to be awarded the 2022 Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award, in Partnership with Pelotonia & AACR. This award will be invaluable for my career development as I study novel therapeutics for ovarian and endometrial cancer.

Research

Women living with HIV (WLHIV), the majority of whom reside in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), face the greatest burden of cervical cancer. Current prevention efforts are aimed at increasing precancer treatment with thermal ablation. However, up to 30% of WLWH with cervical precancer have disease recurrence following ablation. Building on evidence from US studies on the safety and efficacy of self-administered fluorouracil (5-FU) for cervical precancer treatment, Dr. Mungo will investigate the feasibility of using self-administered 5-FU to improve precancer treatment outcomes for WLWH in Africa. She plans to conduct in-depth interviews and focus groups to investigate whether self-administered therapies like 5-FU are acceptable to women with cervical precancer and their male partners in Africa. Additionally, she will perform a Phase I trial to establish the safety of using topical 5-FU following precancer treatment in this population to inform future efficacy studies.

Biography

Dr. Mungo received a bachelor’s degree with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley and completed her medical training at the University of California, San Francisco, where she graduated with distinction in clinical and translational research. She also holds a masters’ degree in public health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. She is currently an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research is focused on improving access to evidence-based, context-appropriate secondary prevention of cervical cancer in Africa, particularly among women living with HIV.

Acknowledgement of Support

I am driven to improve the health of marginalized women globally. Global cervical cancer rates represent a dire inequity, with African women already facing the double burden of poverty and patriarchy being most affected. I am honored by the recognition and support provided by this career development award to carry out this vital research, whose goal is to save women’s lives from a preventable cancer.

Research

Although barriers to genetic testing among eligible people are increasingly reported, evidence around enabling factors is limited. Dr. Roberson seeks to merge health insurance data with in-depth interviews with Black women with hereditary breast and ovarian cancers (HBOC) to understand population-level treatment received after genetic testing, as well as specific factors that enabled genetic testing. She and her research group aim to: 1) evaluate the treatment trajectories of breast and ovarian cancer patients receiving germline genetic testing; 2) characterize specific multi-level facilitating factors that enable the receipt of genetic testing, and 3) develop educational materials based on the study’s findings for participants and advocacy groups.

Biography

Dr. Roberson earned a bachelor’s degree in public health from Brown University and master’s and doctoral degrees in epidemiology from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar and a Truman Scholar. She is currently an assistant professor of health policy at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Her research interests are in applying epidemiologic methods to health services research to promote health equity using big datasets for Black people in the Southern United States. 

Acknowledgment of Support

My overarching goal is to improve cancer outcomes for Black women in the United States. It is a tremendous honor to be a recipient of the 2022 Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers Career Development Award, in Partnership with Pelotonia & AACR to support my work towards that goal.

Research

Through computational analysis, Dr. Hoyos Velez and her colleagues have identified a novel target expressed on the cell surface of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). This protein is otherwise only expressed in the ovaries of premenopausal women and no other normal tissues. They have cloned a second-generation CAR highly specific for this target and plan to test the therapeutic potential of T cells expressing this CAR in TNBC cell lines and PDX models. They also aim to understand the inhibitory mechanisms that affect CAR T cells in the breast tumor microenvironment.

Biography

Dr. Hoyos Velez completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), her internal Medicine residency through BCM’s Medical Resident Investigator Track, and her medical oncology fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently assistant professor at BCM’s Center for Cell and Gene Therapy. She has engineered/validated CARs targeting a broad spectrum of malignancies and has designed strategies to enhance their efficacy and safety. She treats patients with breast cancer, and her research goal is to develop effective T-cell immunotherapies against novel breast cancer-specific targets, incorporating strategies to overcome the hostile tumor microenvironment.

Acknowledgement of Support

This award grants me the opportunity to complete the pre-clinical validation for a completely novel T cell therapy approach for the treatment of TNBC, thereby bringing me closer to my goal of making these treatments available to breast cancer patients.  

 

Research

High-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC) is the most common and deadly subtype of ovarian epithelial cancer, known for its aggressiveness, high rate of metastasis, development of resistance to current therapy, and near-universal recurrence. A major cause of recurrence is the existence of cancer stem cells (CSC). However, the genetic features and regulatory mechanisms of CSC are still largely unknown. Dr. Zhang plans to examine the molecular features and the differentiation hierarchy of CSC in HGSC to:  (1) define the cellular hierarchy and identify the stem/progenitor cell properties in the fallopian tube (FT), and (2) evaluate the potential functions of FT stem/progenitor cells in HGSC initiation and drug resistance.

Biography

Dr. Zhang obtained her doctoral degree in reproductive biology at the Chinese Academy of Science. She pursued her postdoctoral training at the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center of NYU Langone Health. Dr. Zhang is currently a principal investigator at The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University and is focused mainly on the pathogenesis of and precision therapy for HGSC, using human genomics-informed, immune-competent 3D organoid models.

Acknowledgment of Support

Getting this grant has definitely invigorated me – a validation that my focus on high-grade serous ovarian cancer research is meaningful. I’m so honored to have this opportunity to work with Victoria’s Secret to improve outcomes of ovarian cancer patients around the world.