Fueling Hope

Suzette Kirby was just 52 when she died of triple-negative breast cancer in 2015. “She had received excellent care from a UC Irvine physician, so in lieu of flowers, we asked for donations to be made to breast cancer research at UC Irvine,” says her husband, Mike Kirby. “We had no idea how generous the outpouring would be.”

Friends and community members rose to the challenge, eager to donate in Suzette Kirby’s memory. With tens of thousands of dollars raised, Mike Kirby realized he needed a plan to direct the donations to their best use. He worked with contacts at the university to create the Suzette Kirby Breast Cancer Research Fund, which supports UC Irvine scientists studying triple-negative breast cancer. Ten years on, that investment is advancing innovative research that could lead to better treatments for the challenging disease.

TNBC is the most aggressive form of breast cancer – and one of the most difficult to treat. It’s also more likely to affect younger women. Yet because it accounts for just 10 percent to 15 percent of all breast cancer cases, it’s less well studied than other types. “Triple-negative breast cancer is rare enough that it’s probably never going to be a way for drug companies to make a huge amount of money,” Kirby says. That means research dollars are harder to come by. He realized that the lack of investment meant it was an area where his support could make a meaningful difference to scientists investigating how TNBC arises, grows and spreads.

Two UC Irvine researchers leading that work are Devon Lawson, associate professor of physiology and biophysics, and Kai Kessenbrock, associate professor of biological chemistry. The married scientists both study TNBC, sometimes in joint projects and also separately in their respective labs. Both focus on “basic science” – research that seeks to answer fundamental questions about how cancer cells form, grow and communicate with one another.

Though it’s less flashy than clinical trials that test new treatments in human patients, basic science is key to identifying new targets that might one day result in breakthrough therapies. It’s an essential part of the quest to cure TNBC, Kirby recognizes. “There’s a lot of trial and error, but what Devon and Kai are up to strikes me as very productive. This is an area where patient, long-term funding is the way to go,” he says. In 2024, impressed with the pair’s efforts so far, he gave an additional $1 million to support their research on TNBC.

Boosting the Body’s Defenses

Even before that gift, Lawson and Kessenbrock had made important progress in the fight against breast cancer. In 2023, they were part of a national team that published a map of cell types in the human breast. The Human Breast Cell Atlas identifies the many different kinds of cells found in healthy breast tissue and describes their functions. By understanding how those cells work under normal conditions, researchers can better explore what goes wrong when cells turn cancerous.

The atlas has already yielded some important findings. One surprise discovery: Immune cells are much more abundant in breast tissue than anyone realized, making up nearly 17 percent of the total cells in the breast. Now, with support from Kirby, Kessenbrock is looking more closely at the role those immune cells play in the growth and spread of TNBC.

The human body contains many types of immune cells. They each have a unique part to play in identifying and destroying threats such as cancer. Immunotherapy, one important class of modern cancer treatments, fights cancer by boosting the immune system’s ability to wipe out tumor cells. But there’s a lot left to learn about the immune response to different kinds of cancer, including TNBC. When breast cancer is present, the mix of immune cells around a tumor can shift dramatically, Kessenbrock explains. Those changes can fuel cancer growth and affect how patients respond to immunotherapy.

He has determined that a certain type of myeloid cell grows in number when TNBC is present. “We found that those cells can be very immunosuppressive,” Kessenbrock says. In other words, they dial down the action of other immune cell types, weakening the body’s natural defenses – and potentially making immunotherapy less successful too. Now his team is looking for ways to block those immunosuppressive cells. “The hope is that, ultimately, we will be able to develop a treatment that makes immunotherapy more effective in women with TNBC,” he says.

TNBC in the Brain

While Kessenbrock is focusing on what happens in breast tissue, Lawson is working to understand what happens when cancer spreads from the breast into other organs – a process known as metastasis. “TNBC can progress to metastasis very rapidly, within a couple of years,” she explains. Metastatic breast cancer can be managed but not cured.

TNBC often moves to the brain, where it grows quickly and is challenging to treat. Lawson is studying what happens when the cancer cells get there – and how to stop them. In one significant finding, she discovered the key role played by microglia, unique immune cells in the brain. “Microglia act as sentinels. They detect cancer cells that get to the brain and then tell other immune cells how to respond,” Lawson says.

With Mike Kirby’s support, she’s exploring how microglia and other kinds of immune cells respond when TNBC invades the brain. Understanding how they recognize and attack tumor cells is an important step toward developing new therapies that can strengthen the body’s defenses without damaging brain function. “We’re getting closer and closer to figuring out how to improve the immune response,” Lawson says.

Kirby is excited by the headway that she and Kessenbrock are making. But even when the findings are promising, securing funding for basic research is “like the Wild West,” he says. It can take years for large-scale research grants to be approved, which means a lot of stopping and starting for scientists – and longer waits for new treatments for patients. Recent cuts to the federal research budget are likely to slow the pace even more. Against that backdrop, philanthropic support has become even more valuable, says Kirby, who recently retired from Green Street Advisors, the real estate analysis and research company he founded.

“The hope is that, ultimately, we will be able to develop a treatment that makes 
immunotherapy more effective in women with TNBC.” 

– Kai Kessenbrock, associate professor of biological chemistry

To help fill the funding gaps in the most effective way possible, he brings his business acumen to his philanthropy. Kirby meets regularly with Lawson and Kessenbrock to discuss developments and create a priority list of promising projects. His investment serves as a bridge to support the most high-priority research until larger grants come through. With that bridge funding, the researchers can keep marching forward and generating preliminary evidence that makes them more likely to be supported by agencies like the National Cancer Institute. Not every project will be a home run, Kirby says, but he believes that investing in high-risk, high-reward research is the best path to a cure. “In a world where we’ve made progress against so many other types of cancer and so many other diseases that kill people, there’s no way we can’t make progress against this one,” he says. “I’m confident that one or two generations down the road, triple-negative breast cancer won’t be a death sentence.”

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By the Numbers: Breast Cancer

1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime.

10% to 15%: Share of all breast cancers that are triple-negative

< 40: TNBC is more common in women under 40 and those who haven’t yet gone through menopause. It’s also more common in Black and Hispanic women.

1 in 5 women with TNBC have inherited a gene that increases their risk of breast cancer (such as the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes).

↓ 44%: Between 1989 and 2022, death rates for all types of breast cancer combined fell 44 percent, thanks to better screening and better treatments. Research is key to developing those lifesaving therapies.

Source: American Cancer Society