Veena Padmanaban, Ph.D. is a cancer biologist whose research explores how the nervous system shapes breast cancer progression and metastasis. She completed her Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where she discovered that E-cadherin — a molecule traditionally viewed as a tumor suppressor — paradoxically promotes metastasis across multiple breast cancer models (Nature, 2019). As a postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University in Dr. Sohail Tavazoie's laboratory, she led pioneering work demonstrating that sensory nerves actively drive breast cancer metastasis by releasing a neuropeptide that activates a pro-metastatic signaling pathway in cancer cells (Nature, 2024). This work further identified aprepitant — an FDA-approved anti-nausea agent already used in oncology — as an inhibitor of this nerve–cancer axis that significantly reduces tumor growth and metastasis in preclinical models. Dr. Padmanaban has recently launched her independent laboratory at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, where her group investigates how cancer cells co-opt and reprogram the peripheral nervous system across multiple stages of metastatic progression, with the goal of defining and therapeutically targeting neural dependencies in cancer. Her work has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Blavatnik Regional Award for Young Scientists, the Breakout Prize for Junior Investigators, the ASCB Merton Bernfield Award, and a Hope Funds for Cancer Research Fellowship.