Maria Calon

Maria Calon demonstrated that CAF-derived TGF-beta signaling is the dominant determinant of poor prognosis in colorectal cancer, and that a CAF gene expression signature predicts disease relapse more accurately than tumor cell-intrinsic molecular subtypes, establishing CAF biology as a critical prognostic and therapeutic target. Her work showed that specific CAF subsets provide Wnt ligands that maintain cancer stem cell self-renewal in the colonic crypt niche, and that eliminating Wnt-providing CAFs collapses the cancer stem cell compartment. She develops combination strategies targeting both CAF-derived Wnt signals and cancer stem cell-intrinsic Wnt pathway activation.