Identifying novel regulators of colorectal cancer invasion

About the Project

Cancer metastasis accounts for around 90% of cancer deaths. While the survival rate has been improved over the years through early diagnosis, limited progress has been made in the targeting of metastasis. This stems from a fundamental lack of understanding of the basic biology underlying this process. While flies have emerged as powerful tool to investigate tumour growth and identify cancer related pathways, to-date studies have been limited by a lack of metastatic models where cells can be followed from primary tumour development to secondary tumour formation in adult organisms. We recently overcame this longstanding limitation, developing the first model for the induction of macrometastases in adult Drosophila melanogaster.

This project aims to now leverage this model to identify the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the first steps of cell dissemination from the primary tumour. This will involve developing methods to live image tumour cell dissemination from primary tumours, and out of a complex organ, on our labs own dedicated multiphoton confocal. In parallel, genomics data existing within the lab will be mined to identify candidate genes. Combining live and fixed confocal analysis, as well as sensitive luciferase assays for each step of the metastatic process, these candidates will be investigated for a functional role in tumour metastasis. Overall, we expect the findings from the project to provide new insight into the complex process of cancer metastasis, as well as provide novel prognostic and therapeutic markers for metastatic colorectal cancer.