Unmasking Non-Genetic Determinants Instructing Tumor Initiation (IGNITE)

Introduction

The gene-environment interaction paradigm has long provided a framework for understanding the contribution of environmental cues to cancer initiation. However, recent perspectives reveal that even amongst genetically identical cells, responses to environmental variation can be remarkably diverse. When and how pathogenic gene-environment interactions effectively ignite cancer remains ambiguous.

Project Overview

IGNITE aims to explain what drives cancer initiation beyond genetics by dissecting (mal)adaptive responses to environmental variation at the cell, tissue, and organismal level, taking inflammation-driven pancreatic cancer as a disease paradigm.

Hypothesis

I hypothesize that qualitatively distinct forms of local and systemic inflammation, which I refer to as “inflammatory contexts,” direct tumor evolution in ways that are largely predetermined by epigenetic fingerprints integrating cells’ lineage, mutational, and environmental exposure history.

Objectives

To achieve this, I will:

1. Identify epigenetic determinants underlying the differential potential of pre-malignant and malignant cell states to sense, communicate, and evolve within distinct inflammatory contexts.
2. Define tissue-level hallmarks of pathogenic vs. homeostatic inflammatory contexts, and develop new approaches to engineer immune cell states distinguishing each.
3. Dissect poorly understood links between pancreatic cancer risk and distal inflammatory disorders to uncover organismal mechanisms.

Methodology

IGNITE’s multi-layered perspective of cancer susceptibility and evolution will integrate methodologies to map and functionally interrogate molecular, cellular, tissue, and systemic traits in human samples and physiological models to establish causal relations.

Conclusion

In sum, IGNITE will unmask yet-unknown contextual determinants of cancer beyond genetic susceptibility. The project’s results, new methods, and concepts will make it possible to rationally harness inflammatory cues for steering tumor evolution towards clinically manageable states.