Adrover lab

Cancer Macroenvironment Lab

We study how cancer affects the entire body, with a particular emphasis on blood cell formation and the cardiovascular and immune systems.

Cancer is a highly complex disease, and tumour progression requires the concerted action (and inaction) of many physiological systems. To survive, tumours co-opt and modify many different biological processes.

This can happen both locally in the tumour’s immediate area, its ‘microenvironment’, and more widely across the whole organism, its ‘macroenvironment.’ In doing so, cancer affects normal physiology in ways that can be detrimental and often fatal.

For example, cancer patients have an increased risk of developing coronary artery disease and other cardiovascular diseases, but we still don’t fully understand how this takes place. 

Tumours can also hijack the production of blood cells in our body, leading to the production of cells that are more favourable to the tumour’s growth. It can also change the way some immune cells behave, including neutrophils, which are the most abundant immune cells in human blood.

By better understanding some of these processes, we hope to find ways of protecting cancer patients and cancer survivors from some of the adverse effects associated with tumours.