Amanda Mathis, chief financial officer of Bridgestone Americas, was just 35 when she first felt a lump in her right breast.

Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) has received $2.3 million to fund a clinical research trial testing a combination of three immunotherapy compounds for patients with a specific type of advanced breast cancer.

Thanks to advances in treatment, the relative five-year survival rate from all combined subtypes of breast cancer now exceeds 90 percent and yet the disease remains the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States after lung and colorectal cancers.

New findings could explain the link between chronic stress and reduced survival in women diagnosed with breast cancer, and could lead to new strategies to improve treatment outcomes.

Research led by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) investigators may have solved a mystery about why a targeted therapy stops working in a small group of breast cancer patients.

Signaling through a complex of proteins called mTORC2 plays a role in breast cancer migration, invasion and metastasis, Vanderbilt researchers reported.