Outsmarting cancer: how scientists stay one step ahead

Therapy-resistant and metastatic breast cancer emerges when tumour cells adapt to survive treatment and spread to distant organs. Over time, multiple changes in the cancer cells and their environment allows them to not only colonise new tissues but also to evade the therapies designed to eliminate them. My research uses single-cell technologies and advanced models to uncover these escape mechanisms. In this talk, you’ll learn how cancer cells evolve to outmanoeuvre treatments - and how we’re developing smarter strategies in return, to outsmart them.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, partly because it’s often diagnosed too late and doesn’t respond well to chemotherapy. My research dives into these two challenges by studying how pancreatic cancer begins and why it resists treatment. Using patient-derived ‘mini-organs’ and 3D imaging, I’m exploring the earliest changes that turn healthy cells into cancer - and what makes some tumours so stubborn. By understanding these processes, we hope to find new ways to catch pancreatic cancer earlier and treat it more effectively.