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Research team receives $2.4M grant
The NCI presented a $2.4 million, 5-year grant to researchers who hope to identify metabolic vulnerabilities of cancers with mutations in the RAS gene.
Eileen White
The collaborative research effort will be led by Eileen White, PhD, associate director for basic science at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, and Joshua D. Rabinowitz, MD, PhD, professor in the department of chemistry and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University.
Recent research has shown activation of cancer genes and loss of tumor suppressor genes reprograms cell metabolism. Cancer cells subsequently acquire the ability to make building blocks for production of new cancer cells and produce the energy needed for cancer growth.
White, Rabinowitz and colleagues will try to determine what RAS needs to convert normal cells into tumor cells, including how RAS alters metabolism in ways that are essential for tumor growth, according to a press release.
“We have already shown that RAS-driven cancers are vulnerable to interference in specific metabolic pathways,” White said in the release. “By further examining these metabolic liabilities, we will be able to identify additional weaknesses that can be targeted therapeutically to provide new treatments for RAS-driven cancers.”