Overview

The Cancer Research Center (CRC) at QBRI focuses on understanding the cellular and molecular basis of cancer initiation and progression, with a focus on breast cancer, which is the most common cancer among females globally. Breast cancer prevalence in the Arab region is similar to that in the rest of the world. However, some studies have suggested that Arab women may experience more aggressive forms of breast cancer.

The CRC currently has four active research teams, each with diverse expertise and research interests that fall within two main themes, cancer immunology and immunotherapy, and cancer biomarkers and therapy.

Selecting the most effective treatment during first-line therapy for each patient (personalized medicine) improves survival outcomes. For a subset of breast cancer patients, disease progression may happen after primary treatment, therefore, more effective therapies are needed.

The CRC explores several strategies to improve clinical outcome of breast cancer patients, including harnessing the power of the immune system, and the identification of breast cancer risk factors and novel biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction of treatment response.