The long-term goal of the Vander Heiden lab is to understand how mammalian cell metabolism is adapted to support cancer initiation and progression.
His talk will focus on environmental constraints on cancer metabolism:
"Complex regulatory mechanisms enable cell metabolism to match physiological state. The major pathways cells use to turn nutrients into energy and to synthesize macromolecules have been elucidated; however, there remain many unanswered questions regarding how metabolism supports cancer cell proliferation and thus how best to target metabolism for cancer treatment. How specific cancers use metabolism to support proliferation is determined both by cell intrinsic factors and the nutrients available within the tumor. Accumulating evidence suggests that nutrient availability in tissues is heavily influenced by non-cancer cells in the tissue such that tissue location is a major determinant of nutrient availability. Thus, to metastasize cancers have to adapt to nutrient conditions found within tissues and this can impact metastatic tumor growth. Whole body metabolism and diet can also influence nutrient availability in tissues, and comparing the effect of different diets on nutrient levels can inform the mechanism(s) for how diet alters cancer progression.