Our goal is to obtain new information about “autophagy” that could help to improve breast cancer outcomes. Autophagy is a novel recycling process in all cells that may affect tumour development and tumour responses to therapy. However, findings to date have come primarily from experimental models that may not be indicative of patients’ cells. We will now address this gap starting with a first-time ever investigation of the role of autophagy in directly isolated normal human breast cells (obtained from consented reduction mammoplasty tissue). We will then analyze if and how autophagy is altered in human breast cancers that can and have been rapidly and reproducibly generated from normal human breast cells using a novel protocol that we have developed. The experiments proposed will determine the particular normal and malignant human breast cell types in which autophagy is important and how, a whether manipulating it might be advantageously exploited.