Roarty LabBaylor College of Medicine

Breast Cancer Research · Metastasis

Defining the cellular logic of breast cancer

We study how healthy breast tissue is built, and how cancer hijacks those same developmental programs to invade, spread, and resist therapy. Our goal is to find the weak points in metastasis and turn them into new treatments.

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Live imaging: a mammary organoid growing in 3D culture

Our Mission

Turning insight into impact for patients with breast cancer

Breast cancer is not a single disease, and its ability to spread makes it especially difficult to treat. We work to uncover the fundamental mechanisms that drive progression and metastasis: the spread of cancer cells to distant organs, and the primary cause of patient mortality.

Our Research

How the breast is built, and how cancer breaks the rules

We investigate how the breast develops under normal conditions, and how this finely tuned process goes awry in cancer, with a particular focus on metastasis, the leading cause of death in breast cancer.

Breast development is orchestrated by a complex network of hormonal signals, genetic programs, and environmental cues. These same pathways, so essential for building healthy tissue, are often hijacked or repurposed in cancer. We aim to uncover how this rewiring occurs at the molecular level and what makes certain cancer cells more likely to spread.

One of the key themes driving our work is the idea that cancer is not merely chaotic; it is highly organized, even purposeful. We study how tumor cells coordinate with one another and their surrounding environment to gain the traits needed to invade, survive in circulation, and colonize new tissues.

How tissue takes shape

Breast development is orchestrated by hormonal signals, genetic programs, and environmental cues. We map how these pathways build healthy tissue, the essential baseline for understanding disease.

How cancer rewires it

Cancer is not chaotic; it is organized, even purposeful. We study how tumor cells repurpose developmental programs and coordinate with their environment to gain the traits needed to invade.

How metastasis succeeds

We ask what lets cancer cells survive in circulation and colonize new organs like the lung, searching for the specific vulnerabilities of metastatic cells that new therapies could target.

Focus areas

Where we concentrate our work

Building the mammary gland

We map the hormonal, genetic, and mechanical programs, including noncanonical Wnt/Ror2 signaling, that build the branching architecture of healthy breast tissue and set the ground rules that cancer later breaks.

Cell identity, fate & plasticity

We study how breast cells acquire and maintain their identity, and how tumor cells exploit that plasticity to adapt to new environments, invade, and resist therapy.

Tumor cell cooperation & the microenvironment

We investigate how different cell types within a tumor coordinate with one another and their surroundings to gain traits, like invasion and survival, that no single cell could achieve alone.

Invasion, metastasis & vulnerabilities

We ask how cancer cells spread to distant organs and how the specific weaknesses of metastatic cells can be turned into new therapeutic strategies.

Our Approach

Developmental biology meets cancer research

We use 3D organoid cultures to mimic the organization of breast tissue and observe how cells behave in real time. In parallel, we use both syngeneic and patient-derived xenograft mouse models to study how tumors evolve in living systems, and we analyze patient tumor samples to connect our findings to human disease.

Advanced microscopy, including confocal and second harmonic generation imaging, lets us visualize cell interactions and tissue architecture with remarkable clarity. We also draw on single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, flow cytometry, and related approaches to profile cell states at high resolution.

Illustration of a mammary duct progressing from an ordered epithelial layer to invasive, heterogeneous tumor cells spreading into surrounding tissue
From an ordered mammary duct to invasive, heterogeneous disease

Live imaging

Tissue in motion

The mammary gland is a dynamic, contractile tissue. Here, alveoli rhythmically contract during lactation to move milk through the gland, a striking example of the coordinated cell behavior we study.

Contracting alveoli during lactation. Live imaging of the mammary gland.

From the bench

Imaging the biology

Second harmonic generation imaging of fibrillar collagen at the edge of a mammary organoid
Ror2 knockdown mammary organoid
H&E-stained section of a triple-negative breast cancer tumor
Wild-type mammary duct: membrane GFP (cyan) and smooth muscle actin (magenta)
Wild-type mammary gland at lactation: membrane GFP (green) and tdTomato (red)

Featured publications

Recent work from the lab

All publications

Long-term vision

From understanding to intervention

By integrating these approaches, we aim to uncover fundamental insights into how breast cancer progresses and, more importantly, how we can stop it. Our long-term vision is to identify novel therapeutic strategies that target the specific vulnerabilities of metastatic cells, bringing us closer to preventing cancer from spreading and improving outcomes for patients.

Latest News

What's happening in the lab

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Join us

We're looking for curious scientists

We welcome enthusiastic postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and research professionals who are excited about discovery and collaboration. Whether you're a scientist, collaborator, student, or advocate, we'd love to hear from you.

Email roarty@bcm.edu

Part of

Baylor College of Medicine·Molecular & Cell Biology·Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center