Carina Strell

Carina Strell has a PhD in tumor biology from the University of Witten-Herdecke in Germany, and moved to Stockholm, Sweden in 2010 for postdoctoral studies at Karolinska Institute with Professor Arne Östman, to gain insights into translational cancer research, and work on tumorstroma interactions in early breast cancer (DCIS). From 2016 throughout 2018, she was a researcher at the Science for Life Laboratory with Professor Mats Nilsson where she worked with the in situ sequencing technique to map mutations in breast cancer tissue, in collaboration with Lucy Yates at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK). Since 2019, she has been at Uppsala University, Sweden with the Experimental Pathology group of pathologist Professor Patrick Micke, where she has been leading a small research team on early breast cancer. She became an associate professor in 2020.

Carina Strell received in December 2021 a Trond Mohn Foundation starting grant for her project Understanding Early Breast Cancer Evolution in Space and Time (EvoMaps). Strell has a long-term collaboration with the Akslen group, and her project will be embedded at CCBIO, commencing in Bergen in 2022. She aims to establish a competitive research group within the field of early breast cancer, investigating the biological mechanisms behind why some women experience recurrent and/or treatment resistant disease while others do not. The hypothesis is that breast cancer progression and therapy response is not only dependent on the tumor cells alone, but also on the surrounding tissue microenvironment. Through adaptation of the in situ sequencing technique to the Hyperion Imaging System at CCBIO, Strell will perform a systematic exploration of the genetic properties of tumor cells in relation to their surrounding microenvironment over the course of disease progression and the development of treatment resistance. The overall aim of this project is to uncover and map new mechanisms of early breast cancer evolution, and to improve current diagnostic tools for breast cancer patients, reduce the treatment burden for women with early-stage breast cancer and thus improve their quality of life and spare them treatment related comorbidities.