Alana L. Welm, PhD, has been named the recipient of the 2023 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Outstanding Investigator Award for Breast Cancer Research for her “seminal translational research discoveries that have led to the development and improvement of breast cancer therapies.” In this video, Dr. Welm speaks about what the award means to her.
The award, which is supported by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, was “established to honor an investigator whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of breast cancer,” organizers said in an announcement.
Dr. Welm serves as the senior director of basic science at Huntsman Cancer Institute, a professor in the Department of Oncological Sciences, and the Ralph E. and William T. Main Presidential Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at the University of Utah.
Dr. Welm has “devoted her career to understanding the biology of metastatic breast cancer and to translating her findings into novel therapeutic approaches,” organizers said in a press release. “She has developed innovative breast cancer models that accurately recapitulate breast cancer metastasis and treatment response, which has allowed researchers to evaluate a patient’s therapy in real time.”
Officials noted that through her collection of 180 paired patient-derived xenografts (PDX) and PDX-derived organoids (PDxO), Dr. Welm has “demonstrated that these models allow for the investigation of how human breast tumors metastasize and can also be exploited to predict the risk of recurrence for patients with triple-negative breast cancer.”
“Importantly, when paired with PDxOs, these models also enable enhanced drug screening,” the announcement states. “Her work has led to several collaborative, investigator-initiated clinical trials, which aim to translate findings from her personalized cancer models into the clinic to improve patient care.”
In addition, AACR officials said Dr. Welm has “furthered our understanding of the basic science of breast cancer by utilizing immunocompetent mouse models to make significant mechanistic discoveries,” as she discovered the tyrosine kinase RON as “a crucial contributor to metastatic breast cancer.”
Dr. Welm also identified the “major RON isoforms commonly found in breast tumors and demonstrated that RON activity is sufficient to promote tumor growth and metastasis,” and her lab recently discovered that the “inhibition of short-form RON (sfRON) potentiates antitumor immune responses by expanding stem-like CD4+ T cells and augmenting CD8+ T-cell responses,” organizers said in the announcement.
Visit cancernursingtoday.com for more oncology nursing news.
