The Seeds of Tumor Recurrence:  Dormant Persister Cells in Residual Disease

James V. Alvarez, PhD
Associate Professor
Public Health Sciences Division
Human Biology Division
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Seattle, WA, USA

This conference is hosted by Jean-François Côté, PhD. This conference is part of the 2024-2025 IRCM conference calendar.

About this conference
In many common epithelial cancers, the vast majority of deaths are caused by the survival and eventual recurrence of residual tumor cells after therapy. Residual tumors – also known as minimal residual disease – comprise the population of tumor cells that survives initial treatment and is the reservoir for eventual tumor progression. Because recurrent tumors are often incurable, it is critical to understand how cancer cells survive treatment, persist as residual cells during a prolonged dormant period, and eventually recur. I will discuss our lab’s work aimed at understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the survival of residual tumors, with the goal of designing therapies to eliminate residual disease and cure patients. We have identified pathways that underlie the ability of residual cells to survive, persist, and eventually recur, including alterations in epigenetic pathways and cell identity in residual cells; reprogramming of residual cell metabolism; and co-opting of interactions between residual cancer cells and stromal cells.

About James V. Alvarez
James V. Alvarez, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Public Health Sciences at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He received his PhD. at Harvard Medical School, where he worked with David Frank studying the function and mechanism of the Jak-Stat pathway in solid tumors. He performed postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Lewis Chodosh at the University of Pennsylvania, where he used genetically engineered mouse models to study tumor recurrence. Dr. Alvarez’s lab takes a multidisciplinary approach to studying residual disease and tumor dormancy, with a focus on identifying pathways that regulate the survival and recurrence of drug-tolerant persister cells. Dr. Alvarez has received funding from the V Foundation, the Whitehead Foundation, the American Cancer Society, and the NIH.

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