Dr Aadya Nagpal Malhotra is an early career postdoctoral researcher in Professor Steven Stacker’s laboratory. Her research interests include understanding the mechanisms underlying the spread of cancer to specific organs and identifying the key factors involved in dictating responses to anti-cancer therapies. She completed her PhD in 2022 at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, School of Cancer Medicine, La Trobe University. Her doctoral studies were focussed on developing and characterising a new murine model of the HER2-positive subtype of breast cancer that spreads from the primary tumour to distant sites (including the brain) as observed in patients with this subtype. She further capitalised on this model system to explore the efficacy and mechanisms of resistance to HER2-targeting tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Her work has been presented at multiple national and international forums and forms the basis of 3 published original research articles and 3 published conference abstracts.

Aadya’s current research vision combines her expertise in the preclinical mouse models of breast cancer progression with cutting-edge technologies such as single-cell RNA sequencing and targeted spatial transcriptomics to identify the earliest cellular and molecular changes in the vascular networks that precede the metastatic spread of cancer to distant organs. Furthermore, she is also leading a project to understand the role of a key growth-promoting cell surface protein in regulating cancer progression as well as therapy response. She hopes to contribute to the identification and validation of key prognostic and therapeutic targets to prevent the spread of cancer.