Associate Professor Christine Chaffer has long-standing expertise in breast cancer research focusing on epigenetic programs that control cancer cell states and tumor progression.

Her work led to the discovery that non-aggressive breast cancer cells can spontaneously convert into highly aggressive, metastatic, and therapy-resistant cell states. A new therapeutic strategy arising from this finding is being tested in the clinic as the first state-gating therapy to block the dynamic processes that lead to the emergence of chemotherapy resistance.

To better understand the breadth of plasticity programs at play in cancer, A/Prof Chaffer and machine learning expert Prof Krishnaswamy (Yale), have developed new methods to discover cell state trajectories leading to the emergence of therapy-resistant cell states.

They have also developed tools to define intratumoral heterogeneity in single-cell and spatial transcriptomic data and devised underlying causal gene regulatory networks that drive cancer progression.

Associate Professor Chaffer’s current research is focused on identifying and uncovering new therapeutic strategies to treat aggressive cancers by focusing on epigenetic programs that control cell state plasticity (transcriptomics, RNA translation, protein).