Identification of novel mechanistic links between oncogenic kinase signaling and cancer metabolism
Rewiring of cellular metabolism is a hallmark of cancer, yet only a handful of metabolic enzymes are known to be mutated in cancer. While much work has been done in recent years to unravel the mechanisms leading to such metabolic alterations, we still have a limited understanding of the oncogenic events that reprogram metabolism in cancer cells.
Work in the past decade has revealed that signaling networks, which are frequently mutated in cancer, can recalibrate cellular metabolism to meet the anabolic demands of cancer cell proliferation (Hoxhaj and Manning, Nat Rev Cancer 2019). Protein kinases are key regulators of signal transduction with vast roles in orchestrating cellular processes, including metabolism. However, out of the 518 kinases in the human kinome, only a small fraction has been implicated in regulating metabolism. Our lab is interested in identifying key kinases that control cancer metabolism. Discovering critical regulatory nodes at the intersection of the kinome and cellular metabolism has the potential to reveal new therapeutic targets.
