Cutting off cancers fuel supply

One fundamental question is: what fuels cancer’s growth?

To try and answer this question, a research team that includes formerJAX Assistant Professor Mingyang Lu recently published a paper that examined “metabolic plasticity” in cancer. Metabolic plasticity refers to the cancer metabolism’s ability to gain energy from multiple fuel sources within a host’s body. This adaptive behavior makes treatment of cancer difficult, as it can choose its method of producing energy depending on the surrounding conditions. Many treatments rely on cutting off cancer cells’ fuel supplies, but how can you stop something that can change energy sources?

To examine this resilient behavior, the researchers utilized a sophisticated computer model. This model focused on how cancer cells grow. They wanted to prove that cancer can adjust its metabolism to match its environment, in other words selecting where and how it obtains fuel to survive. The results of this research are guiding future cancer research and treatment. It shows that an understanding of metabolic plasticity is required to target some forms of cancer, accounting for cancer’s ability to process nutrients in a variety of ways.

Unlocking cancer research

Proving even a seemingly small fact about cancer can have far-reaching ramifications. This precise, genomic approach is what JAX is all about. Cracking these “genetic codes” continues to bring new discoveries to light and helps researchers to make new lines of inquiry into many types of cancers. In this case, by examining cancer’s “fuel sources,” JAX moves ever closer to discovering treatment strategies aimed at the unique genetic profiles of patients and cancers.

Learn more about cancer research at The Jackson Laboratory:

• For more information on this research (including a link to the original paper), click here.
• If you’d like to learn more about computational sciences at JAX, click here.