We’re bringing together leaders in cancer research.
Speaker
Alexander Muir, PhD
Assistant Professor
Ben May Department of Cancer Research
Committee on Cancer Biology
Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition
University of Chicago
“Hangry cancer cells: metabolic stress and tumor biology”
A hallmark of tumors is aberrant angiogenic signaling and dysfunctional vasculature. This results in poor perfusion in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Limited perfusion causes hypoxia and metabolic stress in the TME. Despite the longstanding understanding that tumors are metabolically stressed, we have limited understanding of how this contributes to cancer pathogenesis. I will discuss new tools that expand our understanding of how metabolic stress regulates tumor biology, which led to the findings that metabolic stress limits the efficacy of targeted, immuno- and chemotherapeutics, leading to the current view that metabolic stress is a barrier to successful treatment of cancer. However, while metabolic stress limits the efficacy of standard therapies, it creates novel therapeutic targets, as cellular processes which are non-essential in well-perfused healthy tissues become essential for metabolically stressed tumors. I will discuss work identifying these stress-contingent essential processes and argue these processes represent an entire new class of therapeutic targets, TME-synthetic lethal targets, that leverage the unique TME, rather than being limited by it.