March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month! Check out our interview with trainee Alyssa Cristea to learn about her ongoing colorectal cancer research at the GCI.
Name: Alyssa Cristea
Lab: Dr. Daniela Quail
Year: MSc Student, Year 2
My research focuses on understanding how obesity influences the immune response against colorectal cancer (CRC), particularly in the context of liver metastasis (CRCLM), which is the leading cause of death in CRC patients. This work is made possible through our ongoing collaboration with Advanced Bio Imaging Facility and Single Cell Imaging and Mass Cytometry Analysis Platform within the GCI, 91社区 Health Centre, CHU de Qu茅bec-Universit茅 Laval Research Center, and 91社区 Genome Centre.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have been shown to be more effective in obese patients for multiple tumor types. In CRC, although most patients do not respond to ICIs, Health Canada recently approved use of a specific type of immunotherapy called anti-PD1 in a subtype of CRC, which accounts for ~15% of sporadic CRC cases and ~4% of stage IV disease, while many other CRC patients have limited therapeutic options, which are often invasive and have low response rates. Understanding how obesity shapes the tumor immune microenvironment and potentially creates opportunities for immunotherapy is critical to understand how ICI and obesity may work together in the clinical setting. This work will provide insight on how to potentially sensitize stage IV CRC to ICI therapy, which could serve the substantial proportion of CRC patients with poor therapeutic success.
You can reach out to Alyssa at alyssa.cristea [at] mail.mcgill.ca