A Role for Mitochondrial One Carbon Metabolism in Early Tumourigenesis

How can tissue healing processes be subverted into malignant progression? Dr. Zarou is using her EACR-Mark Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship to explore how modulation of folate metabolism in pancreatic and innate immune cells alters the response to pancreas damage and leads to pancreatic cancer development. Her project, which will draw on in vitro and in vivo models combined with multiomic technologies and molecular biology techniques, is aimed at understanding the role of mitochondrial one-carbon metabolism. Through this work, Dr. Zarou hopes to unlock mechanistic insight into critical factors that distinguish damage resolution from persistence and to identify metabolic vulnerabilities at the early stages of cancer development.