Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Lung cancer is the main cause of cancer-related deaths in Canada. A major risk for lung cancer deaths is when cancer cells escape the lung to invade other organs, causing new cancers to show up throughout the body. This process is called 'metastasis' and requires the cells to produce lots of extra energy. To supply the energy required for metastasis, cancer cells must first go through major changes in how they recycle old and damaged parts of the cell. A molecule called 'BCL2L13' helps control this recycling process in cancer cells. Importantly, we have found that less of this molecule is made in lung cancer patients whose cancer has spread to other organs. This means that BCL2L13 could help control lung cancer metastasis, and drugs that change BCL2L13 levels might be a good way to treat lung cancer. In my project, I will control the amount of BCL2L13 made in lung cancer cells and examine how it controls the escape of lung cancer cells to other organs. To confirm my results in a more realistic way, I will use an exciting new technology called '3D bioprinting' to build realistic lung cancers in a dish. By controlling the amount of BCL2L13 made in these realistic lung cancers, I can then see how energy production, recycling and metastasis change. Furthermore, we will extend our studies to live human tissue samples from patients with lung cancer. This provides us with extremely useful and first-hand clinical data about lung cancer metastasis and how we can harness BCL2L13 to combat metastasis in patients with lung cancer. Altogether, my project will give us a much better understanding of how BCL2L13 contributes to the spread of lung cancer cells to other organs. This is an important first step towards developing new cancer treatments that target BCL2L13, which will improve the lives of people living with lung cancer.