Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Transformative breakthroughs to challenges associated with mispatterning of tissues, such as in cancer, requires the comprehensive understanding of cellular communication. Just as chemicals instruct cells to divide, grow, and specialize to form organisms, so do biophysical signals. Mechanical and electrical signals are pervasive in the cell’s microenvironment but are only now being recognized as determinants of cell fate and plasticity. Defined as a capacity for change, plasticity is a property of stem cells and cancer cells, defining embryogenesis and tumorigenesis. The destructiveness of cancer reflects an inappropriate expression of embryonic signaling normally suppressed in mature cells. While molecules are important, it has become evident that cellular electricity and light emissions predict and instruct cancer too. What is the role of biophysics in cancer, and can it be exploited to develop therapeutics? Dr. Nirosha Murugan, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Tissue Biophysics, and her team aim to decode the biophysical dimension of cellular communication by measuring the electrical and optical signatures of cells as they commit to fates or revert to plastic states. Further, she and her team are characterizing the relationships between bioelectricity, light-based signaling, and interactions between cells and their microenvironments. Using biophysics principles to manipulate cell fate and tissue plasticity, Dr. Murugan will establish the first comprehensive, biophysical toolset to detect and reprogram cells with global implications for cancer therapeutics and diagnostics.