WEHI Wednesday Seminar hosted by Professor Jane Visvader

Dr Somi Kordafshari

Research Officer – Breast Cancer Laboratory, Cancer division, WEHI

High resolution spatial mapping of rare breast cancer types identifies diverse cellular niches

Davis Auditorium

Join via SLIDO enter code #WEHIWednesday

Including Q&A session

In this seminar, I will discuss how integrating high-resolution molecular and spatial profiling approaches can provide new insights into the cellular and organisational complexity of breast cancer. Breast cancer comprises a diverse group of histological and molecular entities, with most research focused on the common forms, while rare histological subtypes remain poorly characterised despite being aggressive tumours that are prone to metastasis and chemotherapy resistance and for which treatment options are limited. I will introduce our work investigating the cellular and spatial architecture of rare breast cancers using single-nucleus RNA sequencing and image-based spatial transcriptomics of archival FFPE tissues. This approach enabled the systematic characterisation of tumour cells, immune populations and stromal components while preserving their spatial relationships within the tumour ecosystem.

I will also highlight how these approaches reveal distinct, subtype-specific cellular ecosystems across rare breast cancers and how integrating molecular profiles with spatial information uncovers previously unrecognised tumour and microenvironmental features that help explain the distinctive biology of these cancers. Together, our findings reveal new avenues for understanding rare and clinically challenging breast cancers.

Dr Somi Kordafshari is a postdoctoral researcher in the Breast Cancer Laboratory at WEHI. She completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in microbial genetics, where she developed extensive expertise in a broad range of advanced experimental and molecular techniques, publishing three first-author papers. Since joining the Breast Cancer Laboratory, she has developed specialised expertise in single-cell technologies, with a particular focus on optimising complex molecular workflows to consistently achieve exceptional data quality and maximal cell recovery across diverse human and mouse tissues, including fresh, frozen, and FFPE specimens, as well as challenging low-input samples. She has co-authored three breast cancer publications and currently has a first-author manuscript under revision.

All welcome!