She worked at Genentech, Inc. (1981-1988) with Axel Ullrich PhD researching growth factor receptors and cloned the HER2 proto-oncogene.
She moved to the University of California, Los Angeles for her doctoral research, where she studied JUNB expression.
[1] She was a postdoctoral researcher working with Douglas Hanahan at the University of California, San Francisco where she used transgenic mouse models of multi-stage cancer progression and demonstrated that chronic inflammation is established in early cancers and subsequently drives tumor development.
She makes use of breast, HPV-associated squamous, pancreas and mesothelioma mouse cancer models, in combination with human cancer specimens, to identify immune-regulated pathways that may be susceptible to therapeutic targeting.
[4] Coussens showed that some immune cells are hijacked to promote tumor growth and metastasis.