Research projects

In his free time, Dr Arribas enjoys nature. He loves scuba diving and riding his mountain bike through the woods. He likes to take pictures and movies of animals and tries to understand their behaviour.

Cancer cells sometimes become senescent in response to cancer treatment. Although these cells stop dividing, they do not die and they can still communicate with neighbouring cells to encourage tumour growth. Dr Arribas and his team have been looking for new ways to help our immune system target senescent cells.

Until now it has been hard to identify a targetable Achilles Heel in senescent cells. If a cancer treatment also attacks non-senescent cells then it causes nasty side-effects, so finding a way to target only senescent cells would lead the way to kinder treatments.

Dr Arribas has recently managed to create a new mice model called SuSe mice which allows senescent cells to be identified much more accurately. Now Dr Arribas and his team plan to use this new model to better understand how senescent cells accumulate. They will investigate the effect of destroying senescent cells at different stages of breast cancer progression, and after different cancer treatments. The researchers hope this project will lead to exciting new therapies for breast cancer with fewer side-effects.