RiboGROUP
Gentilella Lab
Laboratory of cancer metabolism
Ribosome Biogenesis and Biomass production in tumors
The fatal consequences of growing tumors rely on the capacity of cancer cells to invade and destroy the tissue of origin by an uncontrolled generation of tumor biomass, as well as at distal sites of metastasis. Ribosomes are the ancestral machineries devoted to cell mass replication, and inhibiting bacterial protein synthesis has revealed as an effective strategy against infection. Unfortunately, the same approach cannot be applied to tumors since the ribosomes of cancer cells are in principle indistinguishable from those on non-tumoral cells. Still, exacerbated protein synthesis is a major determinant of tumor biomass expansion. For this reason understanding what makes the tumor ribosomes extremely proficient in replicating the cellular components constitutes an ambitious goal that can explain why cancer cells preserve the anabolic capacity after a chemotherapeutic storm, as observed in tumor recurrence.
Translational reprogramming in oncogenic transformation
The process of oncogenic transformation requires an adaptation of the gene expression at all levels. Translational regulations offer a dynamic adaptation to evolving tumors that increase the clonal fitness to adverse growth condition.
The group focuses on understanding how the process of oncogenic transformation reprograms the translatome, particularly (1) how metabolic changes alter the repertoire of translated mRNAs and (2) how cancer cells can exploit such translational networks to survive and overcome standard chemotherapeutic regimens in colorectal cancer and other MYC-driven tumors.
Metabolic Resistance of Tumors: Unraveling Metabolic Vulnerabilities
Annoucements
