19 April 2024
Carlos Carmona-Fontaine
Department of Biology
Center for Genomics and Systems Biology
New York University
The growth rate of cancer cells is much faster than their ability to form new blood vessels. As a result, virtually all tumors contain extensive regions dominated by nutrient and oxygen deprivation. In the same way that temperature or altitude gradients dictate the type of organisms that reside within ecological environments, we study how gradients of metabolites determine cell types and behaviors within the changing tumor microenvironment. Under this view, the extensive heterogeneity we observe in tumors in not only predictable but tunable. In my presentation I will focus on how positional information conferred by extracellular nutrients and other metabolites, changes the immune response to tumors. Specifically, I will discuss how nutrient-scarce environments changes both cancer and T cells resulting in a drastic inhibition of tumor killing. Time permitting, I want to speculate about evolutionary reasons linking nutrients and cell behaviors.