My ultimate career goal is to become a productive and independent clinical/translational investigator in breast cancer and improve survival for all patients with breast cancer. I will address the most pressing challenges in the field through conducting hypothesis-driven trials with targeted therapeutics that are based on preclinical findings. My current research proposal addresses an important problem for patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC; breast cancer that lacks expression of the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 and has a very poor prognosis compared to other breast cancer subtypes). Currently, only PD-L1 positive staining is approved as eligibility criterion for the use of immunotherapy to treat metastatic TNBC. However, only half of patients who tested positive for PD-L1 showed clinical response to immunotherapy in a large clinical trial. PD-L1 positive staining has also not been a marker of benefit in patients with early-stage TNBC. Whether or not other tumor biomarkers can better predict response to immunotherapy remains an important question to be answered. Previous studies suggest that MHC-II expression may serve as a more predictive biomarker of immunotherapy response, findings first made by my mentor’s lab, Dr. Justin Balko. I intend to explore a novel panel of biomarkers, centered on MHC-II expression, which could optimize patient selection and risk-benefit ratios for immunotherapy treatment in breast cancer patients.