Principal Investigator Matthew Vander Heiden is Director of the Koch Institute and
Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology.

The Vander Heiden Laboratory is working to understand how tissue site affects cancer proliferation, and using a variety of approaches to test the hypothesis that different nutrient availability in different tissues determines whether potentially metastatic cancer cells can colonize a particular organ. 

First, the Vander Heiden Laboratory is working to determine which metabolic processes are most limiting for proliferation, and dissecting the extent to which these processes can be supported via nutrient scavenging or de novo synthesis. This research has led to the identification of several metabolic processes involved in nucleic acid metabolism as potential bottlenecks for cancer cell proliferation, for example serine synthesis.

Second, the group seeks to define the nutrients available in different tissues and the factors determining nutrient availability. To do so, the Vander Heiden Laboratory has developed methods to isolate interstitial fluid from tumors and some normal organs, and quantified levels of various metabolites in it. Their analysis has shown that organ site and cancer tissue of origin both are major determinants of the nutrients available in a tumor. In fact, these have a larger effect on nutrient availability than driver mutations in the cancer cells, arguing that interactions between cell types in a tissue have a big influence on what nutrients are present for cancer cells to consume. 

Finally, the Vander Heiden Laboratory is testing whether there is a selective advantage for primary or metastatic cancers to grow in a primary versus metastatic site. The group aims to better understand metabolic barriers to metastasis and identify metabolic pathway dependencies that can be used to stop cancer progression and improve patient treatment.

Search PubMed for Vander Heiden Lab publications