A breast cancer tumor and its surrounding microenvironment. Image/National Institutes of Health
The USC Viterbi School of Engineering has received a new five-year award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop innovative strategies to fight metastatic breast cancer. The project will be led by Principal Investigator Stacey Finley, the Nicole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and co-Principal Investigator Evanthia Roussos Torres, Assistant Professor of Medicine – Oncology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
The project, which is part of the NCI’s Physical Sciences in Oncology Network (PS-ON), aims to unravel the complexities of the breast tumor microenvironment (TME). In advanced breast cancer, the TME is a bustling ecosystem of tumor cells, immune cells, and other cellular components. The intricate interactions within this ecosystem can promote tumor growth and, crucially, contribute to why immunotherapies — treatments that harness the body’s own immune system to fight cancer — often fail in this type of cancer.
Leveraging data from the Roussos Torres lab, Finley and her team aim to combat this immunotherapy roadblock by creating a detailed computational model of this “tumor-immune ecosystem.” This model will help them predict how the system behaves and how it will respond to different treatments. Their goal is to understand how to enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy for patients with breast cancer that has metastasized to the lungs.
“In advanced breast cancer, interactions between suppressive components of the immune system contribute to the lack of efficacy of immunotherapies,” Finley said. “This project will use mechanistic computational modeling combined with tumor imaging to understand the tumor-immune ecosystem of metastatic breast tumors and guide strategies to improve immunotherapy.”
To achieve this, the research team will use a multi-faceted approach, combining computational modeling, quantitative experiments, and tumor imaging data from a mouse model of metastatic breast cancer. The first step involves building an agent-based computational model that captures the cell-to-cell interactions and spatial organization within the tumor. In parallel, the team will conduct experiments to measure tumor growth and profile the cellular makeup of advanced breast tumors.
This experimental data will then be used to calibrate and validate the computational model, ensuring its predictions align with real-world biology. Once validated, the model will serve as a powerful predictive tool. Finley and Roussos Torres will use it to run computer-based simulations of various immunotherapy strategies to determine which cell properties and interactions are most influential in treatment response. They will test the model predictions using a pre-clinical model of metastatic breast cancer.
Nicole A. and Thuan Q. Pham Professor of Biomedical Engineering Stacey Finley. Image/Tiffany Gentry
The project’s ultimate aim is to identify the most effective immunotherapeutic strategies and then test these predictions in vivo and with human tumor samples, paving the way for clinical translation.
Finley leads the Computational Systems Biology Laboratory (CSBL) at USC, which focuses on developing mechanistic and data-driven models of biological systems to study angiogenesis, metabolism, and immunotherapy, particularly in the context of cancer. Finley holds a joint appointment in Quantitative and Computational Biology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and is a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida A & M University and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University, followed by postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University.
An elected fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), Finley’s numerous honors include the NSF Faculty CAREER Award and the Leah Edelstein-Keshet Prize from the Society of Mathematical Biology. In 2025, Finley was honored with the BMES Mid-Career Award.
Published on October 21st, 2025
Last updated on October 22nd, 2025
