Harvard/Dana-Farber professor recognized for contributions to breast cancer research
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD, FAACR, will receive this year’s AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
The award — supported by Aflac Inc. — recognizes outstanding science that has inspired or has the potential to inspire new perspectives on breast cancer etiology, prevention, diagnosis or treatment.
Polyak is professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Polyak received the award in recognition for her research related to the role of the tumor microenvironment and intratumoral heterogeneity in tumor evolution. This work has resulted in considerable advances in the understanding of breast tumorigenesis.
Polyak is considered one of the leading basic and translational scientists in breast cancer research. She was the first investigator to comprehensively profile the cell types that constitute normal, precancerous and cancerous breast tissue.
She proposed that the loss of normal myoepithelium may promote progression from ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) to invasive breast cancer. Her work also demonstrated that the active immune microenvironment in DCIS becomes immunosuppressed during progression to invasive cancer. Polyak’s lab also identified the JAK2/STAT3 pathway as a dependency in triple-negative breast cancer.
Her current research focuses on breast tumor evolution through analysis of patient tissue samples and experimental preclinical models. She also is studying the role of risk factors — such as genetic predisposition, diet and age — in cancer development and progression in hopes of developing novel breast cancer prevention approaches.
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts