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Project

To understand and suppress liver/pancreas cancer cell plasticity and evolution

The incidence of liver cancer increases worldwide and the currently used therapies are insufficient. This phenomenon is caused by the strong heterogeneity of liver tumors by which therapy resistant cell groups develop. Our objectives are to understand the plasticity of cancer cells in liver cancer and control it. First, we will investigate the spectrum of heterogeneity between liver cancer cells and subsequently identify the mechanisms that cause this. Therefore, standardised single cell biological methods will be used to study liver cancer in humans and mice, including RNA-seq and ATAC-seq. These analyses will be combined with advanced methods for somatic genome engineering in mouse models for liver cancer. This will allow us to determine the molecular spectrum of liver cancer cell phenotypes in patients with different types of liver cancer (HCC, CCA and mixed CCA-HCC). Finally, we will investigate the role of the Hippo pathway as a driver of cell plasticity and heterogeneity in cancer and identify the mechanism by which liver cancer cells adopt an aggressive phenotype. The results of these experiments will give us an understanding of how environmental factors influence the fate of liver cancer cells and the heterogeneity that drives cancer cells.

Date:15 Sep 2020 →  Today
Keywords:Oncology, Liver carcinoma, Cancer cell plasticity, Liver cancer classification, Cancer stem cell, Cancer stem cell niche
Disciplines:Cancer biology, Vertebrate biology, Animal cell and molecular biology, Cell growth and development, Cell signalling, Hepatology
Project type:PhD project