Dr Emma Nolan

Advancing breast cancer research here in New Zealand

After a decade working in leading research institutes overseas, Dr Emma Nolan made the deliberate decision to come home. Her goal is clear: to bring international expertise back to Aotearoa New Zealand and apply it to improving outcomes for people affected by breast cancer.

With support from AMRF donors, Emma established her own research programme in Auckland, building something entirely new: a living bank of tumour organoids. These mini tumours grown in the lab can reflect how breast cancer behaves in real patients. 

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Emma’s research focuses on a critical and poorly understood challenge: why people with obesity often experience more aggressive cancer and respond less well to treatment. By studying how cancer cells interact with surrounding fat cells with her tumour organoid technology, she is working to uncover the biological signals that drive tumour growth.

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Through development of breast cancer organoids, Emma is opening new pathways for treatment, ensuring that her global expertise is translated into real impact for patients and whānau here at home. This organoid technique is not only central to her work, but is now being shared across the research community, helping accelerate discoveries in other types of cancer.

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This work, funded through Emma’s Douglas Goodfellow Repatriation Fellowship, has now had the collaborative effect we hope for with all our funding.

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Dr Hossein Jahedi, working in Emma’s lab, is creating a bank of lung cancer tumour organoids from Māori and Pacific patients. His work to reduce this population’s increased risk of death from lung cancer is a directly transferable outcome from supporting Emma to return to Aotearoa New Zealand and shows the value of her international expertise.

Bringing knowledge home means every discovery can directly benefit patients, shaping new treatments and improving outcomes for people here in Aotearoa.