Suzanne M. Ponik

Dr. Suzanne Ponik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from St. Norbert College in DePere, WI, and her Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Biophysics from Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. Dr. Ponik completed her post-doctoral training with Dr. Patricia Keely at UW-Madison. She served as a lead scientist and project manager for over over 10 years in the Keely Lab, gaining valuable experience in both lab and grants management.

The long-term goal of Dr. Ponik's research program is to understand the regulation of breast cancer progression through biomechanical cues from the extracellular matrix. Particularly, her lab is interested in defining how the organization and composition of the extracellular matrix is deposited in tumors and how it initiates immune infiltration, influences cancer and immune cell function, and impacts tumor cell dissemination and metastatic outgrowth. Improving the basic biological understanding of the ECM in tumor progression will lead to the ultimate goal of developing therapies that target the ECM to improve breast cancer outcome. To accomplish these goals her research integrates cell biology and advanced imaging techniques using 3D cell culture and murine tumor models to address the following unanswered questions related to pathophysiologic changes in the ECM of the breast tumor microenvironment. 1) What are the mechanisms regulating the assembly and organization of the ECM in the breast tumor microenvironment? 2) How do cells, including macrophages and fibroblasts, sense and respond to changes in the ECM? 3) How do changes in the ECM within the primary tumor microenvironment impact tumor cell seeding and outgrowth in the metastatic niche? 4) Can we therapeutically target the ECM as an effective anti-cancer therapy?