Dr. Guangwen Ren (Gary), a postdoctoral fellow in the Kang lab, was awarded the DoD Breast Cancer Postdoctoral Fellowship for his proposal  “Metastasis-associated Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Organ-tropic Metastasis of Breast Cancer”.  Breast cancer is still a major health threat worldwide because of its high incidence rate and the constant risk of recurrence. Currently, although surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy have significantly improved the survival of breast cancer patients, we are still far from attaining a relapse-free final cure for all breast cancers. One major reason is the existence of a very complicated breast cancer environment—the "soil" of breast cancer. Scientists recently realized that the resistance of many breast cancer patients against various therapies is mainly caused by such tumor environment. Therefore, how to therapeutically target the "soil" becomes a key question for current breast cancer therapy.  In this project, Dr. Ren will investigate how MSCs in different metastatic sites of breast cancer influence the metastatic behavior of cancer cells.