Monte Meier Winslow, PhD

Our laboratory has developed methods to assess the importance of many genes at the same time in lung tumors growing with genetically engineered mouse models. These methods are unique from what others in the field are doing and involved CRISPR genome editing and molecular “barcoding” of tumors within mouse models of human cancer. We will focus on cancer metabolism, the process by which cancer cells obtain nutrients to produce energy for survival and growth. By measuring the impact of inactivating many key metabolism genes, we discovered new pathways that control cancer growth. Identifying metabolic vulnerabilities and uncovering why cancer cells care so much about these metabolism genes could ultimately lead to new therapies.

Update: Over the past year, we have made strong progress on our goals. We studied how turning off metabolism-related genes affects tumor growth in different cancer settings. This helped us identify genes that behave differently depending on the cancer-driving mutations and whether the tumor suppressor gene p53 is present or not. We confirmed that several of these metabolism genes act as tumor suppressors. In the coming year, we will continue studying how these genes work in living models to better understand how they help prevent lung cancer development.