Dr. Guerriero has been awarded a $2.4M NIH grant for the study, “Immunometabolic pathways enabled by PARP inhibition in breast cancer.”
Macrophages are highly suppressive in the breast tumor and contribute to chemo and immunotherapy resistance. Dr. Guerriero’s lab recently identified that PARP inhibitors (PARPi), a commonly used cancer therapy, induce lipogenic metabolism in TAMs, rendering them even more suppressive, which in turn drives them to inhibit T-cell function and activation and limit therapeutic responses. This work will investigate how lipogenic macrophage and T-cell metabolism in breast cancer is regulated during PARPi therapy, which is likely to provide opportunities for the development of novel treatment strategies that hold the power to overcome the immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment and improve PARPi therapy success in a number of cancer types.
Jennifer Guerriero, PhD
Lead Investigator, Division of Breast Surgery
Director, Breast Immunology Laboratory, Dana-Farber Susan F. Smith Women’s Cancer Program
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Guerriero graduated from Northeastern University with a BS in biochemistry. She obtained a PhD in immunology and pathology and molecular and cellular biology at Stony Brook University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in medical oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Guerriero is an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She is a member of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR); the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), where she is the chair of the Early Career Scientist Committee; and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). She is a working group member of the Immuno-Oncology interest group and the TNBC breast group of the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC), which conducts innovative and high-impact clinical trials for breast cancer.
Dr. Guerriero’s research interests include harnessing the anti-tumor potential of tumor-associated macrophages for breast cancer immunotherapy, understanding how breast cancer cell intrinsic mutations regulate the tumor microenvironment, and elucidating the biology, diversity and ontogeny of tumor macrophages in breast tumors. The major goal of the breast immunology lab is to perform in-depth analysis of animal models and patient samples to efficiently guide rational use and development of immunotherapy modalities for the treatment of breast cancer.
