Breast Cancer

More than 30 physicians and scientists at Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center are reshaping our understanding of breast cancer. This elite group makes our Vera Bradley Foundation Center for Breast Cancer Research a place where science becomes solutions—for people at risk, those fighting the disease, and those who have survived.

This progress is fueled by support from a multitude of donors, including the Vera Bradley Foundation, community organizations and individual donors like you. These generous investments serve as vital funding for our talented researchers to pursue bold ideas. You enable them to gather data, launch clinical trials, and work to change how we prevent, detect, and treat breast cancer.

Breast cancer remains the most common cancer diagnosis for women in the United States, and enduring the often-debilitating cancer treatments can become as harrowing as the diagnosis itself.

Breast cancer cure rates are compromised due to neuropathy, a side effect from chemotherapy that causes numbness, tingling and pain in the hands and feet. This painful issue is the primary reason many patients cannot complete prescribed chemotherapy.

A recent clinical study led by IU physician-scientist Bryan P. Schneider, MD, Vera Bradley Chair in Oncology, led to changes in the standard of care for breast cancer. The study discovered that Black patients with breast cancer experience less neuropathy and less reductions in their chemotherapy dose when treated with a chemotherapy drug called docetaxel. The results from this groundbreaking study were included in the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines, which are recognized as the standards for cancer care decisions used by oncologists globally.

Given the success of CAR T-cell therapy in blood cancers such as leukemia, IU researchers like Kathy Miller, MD, are hopeful new immunotherapies can also benefit breast cancer patients.

Miller, the Ballvé Lantero Professor of Oncology, is leading a first-in-human CAR T-cell therapy trial for metastatic breast cancer. IU is the first site to open and actively enroll patients. The trial’s science was developed at the Scripps Institute, which enlisted Miller to help design the trial protocol. The trial uses a staggered enrollment process to monitor safety and adjust dosing.

IU’s unique capabilities in clinical research allows oncologists to support collaborative, multi-institutional, early-phase trials that bring the latest treatments to Hoosiers first. Miller also is involved in a study testing copper-based therapy for triple negative breast cancer patients with residual disease post-chemotherapy. Another area of study combines diagnostic imaging and targeted therapy to deliver radiation directly to cancer cells. 

Pravin Kaumaya, PhD, the Vera Bradley Foundation Chair in Breast Cancer Innovation, is a world-renowned innovator of vaccines for cancer treatment. Kaumaya and his collaborators have opened multiple breast cancer clinical trials with his peptide-based vaccine called B-Vaxx. This vaccine can be both prophylactic (preventative) and therapeutic to enhance the body’s immune system response to existing cancer.

Kaumaya's research is funded by the Vera Bradley Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and IU's grassroots, philanthropic annual giving program 100 Voices of Hope.

His innovative vaccine is part of a trial for patients with metastatic HER2 expressing breast cancer. Miller serves as the lead clinical investigator. The vaccine is also being tested in another clinical trial for patients with locally advanced HER2-positive breast cancer who have already had standard first-line treatments. Tarah Ballinger, MD, the Vera Bradley Foundation Scholar in Breast Cancer Research, serves as the lead clinical investigator for this trial.

Additionally, Kaumaya has completed preclinical studies for combination therapies for triple negative breast cancer. He has identified two vaccines for use in combination in models for triple negative breast cancer as well as other breast cancers.

Mateusz Opyrchal, MD, PhD, the Vera Bradley Foundation Scholar in Breast Cancer Discovery, is focused on overcoming immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. Immunosuppression means the immune cells that should be attacking cancer cells are being slowed or stopped by the cancer cells. Many different immunosuppressive cell types do this in breast cancer. Opyrchal and his collaborators are developing new ways to target these cells to prevent the tumors from evading immune attacks.

In a study lead by Baohua Zhou, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and microbiology & immunology, researchers have developed a new method that shifts the behavior of immunosuppressive cells called regulatory T-cells, turning them from cancer protectors into tumor fighters. These findings were published in the prestigious Science Immunology journal.

An additional project targets macrophages, another immunosuppressive cell type common in breast cancer. Opyrchal’s team discovered that iron signaling influences the cell’s behavior. By controlling the iron signaling, researchers can shift macrophages to their immune-stimulating state and an anti-tumor response. The findings also could lead to new ideas on how to treat cancer patients who are anemic, meaning they have low iron levels.

By understanding the different ways tumors avoid immune response, Opyrchal has his eye on personalized immunotherapy, using tumor profiling to select targeted interventions from the expanding toolbox of strategies.

Using healthy breast tissue donated by men to the Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank at IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, Hari Nakshatri, PhD, the Marian J. Morrison Professor of Breast Cancer Research, is advancing discoveries in male breast cancer.

While Nakshatri’s research team has developed many breast cancer models, they learned that male breast cancer would require a new approach. Initial attempts to induce cancer in the model using a potent oncogene—effective in female breast cells—were unsuccessful in male cells. When a less potent oncogene was introduced, tumors formed and metastasized to the lungs. This unexpected result suggests significant biological differences in how breast cancer develops in males versus females. The findings may also lead to new insights into how several cancers develop differently in men and women.

Now with models for female and male breast cancers, Nakshatri’s lab is testing whether commonly used chemotherapies work differently in men and women.

The world’s only healthy breast tissue bank, the Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank at IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, expanded its resources through a slam dunk event in July. Nearly 400 women donated healthy breast tissue as part of All-Star Cure — a partnership between the WNBA All-Star 2025 Host Committee and the Komen Tissue Bank and powered by the Catherine Peachey Fund.

The goal of reaching younger women and women of color was met: 40% of the breast tissue donors were under age 40, while 34% of the donors were women of color.

Michele Coté, PhD, director of the Komen Tissue Bank and the Dr. Carrie Ann Glasscock West Chair in Breast Carcinogenesis, noted that these donations will impact the search for new ways to both prevent and cure breast cancer.