What makes cancer the ‘Emperor of all maladies’? Each tumour is unique in terms of the somatic alterations they carry. Moreover, within the same tumour different cancer clones carry distinct somatic alterations. Such widespread intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) makes patient prognosis challenging. To add to this complexity, the cancer cells do not exist in isolation, as the surrounding immune cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts play a crucial response in dictating the evolutionary trajectories of the tumour. My research focuses on untangling how the genetic and non-genetic heterogeneity drives tumour-progression and patient-prognosis. Our lab has previously characterised the genomic-landscape of oral cancers and highlighted the frequent co-occurrence of multiple driver-gene mutations within the same tumor. By investigating the diverse Darwinian-evolutionary patterns of oral tumors, I aim to elucidate how ITH influences clinical outcomes in oral-cancers. To address my research objectives, I perform integrative-analysis of multi-omics high-throughput data using statistical and computational frameworks. Read less
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I am Uday Saha, integrated MSc-PhD student of NIBMG. Since, tumor microenvironment (TME) plays crucial role in driving metabolic plasticity and contribute significantly to tumor progression and aggressiveness. To meet increased energy and biosynthetic demands, cancer cells uptake the secreted metabolites from stromal cells such as lactate, glutamine, and fatty acids. My study focuses on the mecha nistic understanding of how distinct subtypes of cancer associated fibroblasts in oral cancer regulate the metabolic pathways in cancer cells, enhancing cellular plasticity on stemness and EMT axis. Read less
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