Our laboratory is working to understand how and why metabolic reprogramming occurs in tumor cells to discover new strategies to treat human cancer.

Cancer cells are rapidly dividing cells in the body. They take up much more glucose than normal cells (which, is the basis for PET scans). Besides energy source, cancer cells also need to make building materials like DNA, protein, and membranes from sugar, amino acids, and lipids respectively. Several complex regulatory mechanisms enable metabolism to match such demands of the cancer cell. We are interested in discovering these mechanisms by which different types of cancer cells produce nutrients to grow and survive in the body. Besides supporting their growth, metabolic changes are also known to regulate drug resistance or sensitivity. To date, we still don’t know much about the oncogenic changes that might impact the phenotypic metabolic profile of the tumor cells. Other questions like tissue specificity and tumor progression remain unanswered. Using a variety of molecular biology, biochemical and analytical techniques, we will decipher how these processes are rewired in cancers and use this knowledge to design targeted therapies that exploit such metabolic dependencies. Since such treatments would be specific for tumor cells, targeting their errant metabolism holds the promise of providing a more personalized approach to cancer therapy.