Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

The spread of cancer cells to distant sites in the body is the major cause of cancer patient death. Growing evidence connects newly identified cancer cell protrusions, named invadopodia, to invasion of cancer cells and metastasis. Oxygen deprivation of the tumour mass has also been shown to increase the invasiveness of tumour cells. The oxygen deprivation is caused by the rapid and uncontrolled growth of the tumour where new blood vessels do not have time to grow properly. This project will investigate the implication of a protein called Autotaxin, which is known to increase invasion of tumor cells, in the formation of invadopodia and metastasis by tumor cells exposed to low concentrations of oxygen similar to what is found within tumours. The results of this project may lead to the development of therapeutic targets to inhibit cancer metastasis.