Molecular analysis of metastasis-related tumor microenvironment and development of new anti-metastatic therapy

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project Area: Integrative Research on Cancer Microenvironment Network
• Project/Area Number: 22112008
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Research in a proposed research area)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Review Section: Biological Sciences
• Research Institution: Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research
• Principal Investigator: FUJITA Naoya 公益財団法人がん研究会, がん化学療法センター, 所長 (20280951)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): OGO Naohisa 静岡県立大学, 薬学研究院・創薬探索センター, 講師 (20501307)
• Research Collaborator: SATO Shigeo ; NAKAZAWA Youya ; MISAWA Aya ; TAKEMOTO Ai ; OH-HARA Tomoko ; TAKAMI Miho ; MIYATA Kenichi ; OKITAKA Mina ; SEKIGUCHI Takaya ; TAKATORI Kazuki ; FUSE Miho Jane
• Project Period (FY): 2010-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 癌 / がん微小環境 / 転移 / Merm1 / 血小板

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this project, we tried to analyze the regulation of metastasis-promoting activities of Merm1 and Aggrus by tumor microenvironment and to develop anti-metastatic drugs. We performed the following experiments and obtained several new findings.
(1) We found that Merm1 enhanced tumor cell survival in the vasculature by suppressing p53-mediated apoptosis. We established the in vivo screening system to select high metastatic tumors and obtained several candidate metastasis-related genes.
(2) We analyzed the role of platelets in tumor growth and metastasis. We found that platelets were one of the components of tumor microenvironment, that growth factors secreted from platelets were associated with tumor growth in vivo, and that anti-Aggrus drugs would suppress tumor growth as well as tumor metastasis.

Free Research Field

がん化学療法学