A Health Seed Grant from Flinders Foundation will give Flinders cancer researchers a boost in their efforts to identify aggressive breast and prostate cancers and find new drug targets to treat them.

Cancer cells reprogram their metabolism in order to fuel their rapid growth and increasing their production of lipids is a key part of this process. Flinders University Associate Professor Robyn Meech is identifying a new pathway involving enzymes called UGTs that can control the lipid production in breast and prostate cancer cells.

A/Prof Meech is aiming to show how increasing or decreasing the amount of particular UGT enzymes alters the growth of breast and prostate cancer cells via altering these lipid pathways, and to define the detailed mechanisms involved.

This study could provide new biomarkers to identify more aggressive cancers and new drug targets to treat such cancers.

This study could provide new biomarkers to identify more aggressive cancers and new targets for drug development to treat such cancers.

Project title: Novel regulators of lipid metabolism and signalling in cancer

Lead researcher: Associate Professor Robyn Meech