From Frogs to Algorithms: The Unlikely Duo Rewriting Breast Cancer Research

<p><strong>What happens when a cancer biologist and a mathematician become research partners?</strong></p><p>In this episode of All Things Cancer, Dr. Lisa Coussens and Dr. Elana Fertig sit down to talk about the unlikely collaboration transforming how we understand breast cancer. Lisa&#39;s path wound through art school, marine biology, and an early stint at Genentech before she became a leading cancer biologist. Elana came to science through a love of puzzles and math, eventually applying data science to weather prediction before turning her tools toward cancer research.</p><p>Funded by an NFCR grant that encouraged cross-disciplinary partnerships, the two built a collaboration Lisa describes as &quot;like a marriage&quot; — one that combined enormous, complex datasets with the computational tools to make sense of them. They discuss what they found when combining four different anti-cancer therapies in a breast cancer model, why basic science funding matters now more than ever, and what AI can — and can&#39;t — realistically do for cancer treatment.</p>