[Seminar] Modelling Lung Cancer Tumor Progression and Suppression

Seminar

Title: Modelling Lung Cancer Tumor Progression and Suppression

Speaker: Emmy Verschuren

Affiliation: FIMM, Institute for Molecular Medicine, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality worldwide, yet traditional chemotherapy and surgery are still the most effective treatments currently available. Personalised medicine approaches to lung cancer face big challenges: diagnoses are typically made when the disease is already metastatic, and cancer cell populations are notably heterogeneous, complicating molecular profiling. New methods to study the causes of lung cancer and inform the design of novel treatment options are therefore of crucial importance.
We study the cell biological and biochemical properties of key lung cancer tumour suppressors, and integrate this knowledge to build better in vivo and ex vivo lung cancer models to investigate their function in complex microenvironments. Our long-term aim is to investigate new strategies for intervention in lung cancer progression.
Our research strategy comprises highly specific protein purification methods to define protein molecular networks, combined with cell biological assessment of protein localisation and function in vitro and in vivo. We apply reverse genetics approaches on sets of candidate lung cancer tumour suppressors. Research angles are pursued in a diverse set of systems, from human cells to mice to complex epithelial culture systems. To translate our findings to the clinic, key findings in animal models will be aligned with primary lung cancer patient materials, integrating biobanking and molecular profiling capacities available at FIMM and associated Biocenters. We work together with industry partners to develop complex models for target validation and gene therapy approaches via active participation in the European public-private IMI consortium PREDECT (http://predect.eu).

Biographical Sketch [pdf.]