IMSR Online Seminar with Dr Vesna Stanulovic

Talk title

'Identifying rate-limiting steps in cancer metabolism using multi-omics approach and developing novel therapeutic agents for cancer treatment'

About this talk

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (T-ALL) is a cancer of the immune system. Approximately 20% of paediatric and 50% of adult T-ALL patients relapse and die from the disease. To improve outcome, new drugs are needed. With the aim to identify new therapeutic targets, integration of the transcriptomics and metabolomics data, from cell lines and patient samples led to the discovery that EAAT1 (SLC1A3) is crucial for glutamine conversion to nucleotides and T-ALL cell proliferation. Validation of the EAAT1 function confirmed that this protein is a useful therapeutic target and led to the development of novel EAAT1 allosteric inhibitors that can be used for cancer treatment. Further to this, EAAT1 is present in a number of different malignancies which presents a possibility that inhibition of EAAT1 function could be used in treatment for a wider range of cancer types.

About the speaker

Vesna Stanulovic acquired a broad area of expertise during her PhD and postdoctoral positions in the field of hepatology, neurobiology and haematology. Most recently, while working as a postdoctoral researcher in Dr Maarten Hoogenkamp group at the University of Birmingham, Vesna focused her efforts on the identification of novel useful therapeutic targets and the development of therapeutic agents for anti-cancer therapy.