BMC Seminar Thursday, 22nd of March at 12:25 in room 343 Læknagarður

Speaker: Arnar Sigurðsson, master´s student in Óttar Rolfsson´s group at the Center for systems biology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Iceland

Title: The role of central carbon metabolism in breast epithelial stem-like cells during EMT

Abstract: Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women and has the mortality rate substantially dropped over the past decade which is largely due to improved treatment and screening technology, yet the 5-year relative survival rate of metastatic cancer remains low.  The underlying mechanism of metastasis are many and, in this project, we focus on the metabolism of Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal transition (EMT). In this study the central carbon metabolism of an isogenic breast cell EMT model D492 and D492M is compared using Western blotting, RT-qPCR, shRNA knockdowns, proteomics, lipidomics and metabolic models generated at the Center for Systems Biology. Comparison of D492 and D492M revealed changes in the central carbon metabolism such as reduced glycolysis via a reduction in 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2,6-biphosphatase 2 (PFKFB2) and a reduction in β-oxidation and amino acid exchange. Experiments on knockdowns with reduced expression of Citrate Synthase (CS), Isocitrate dehydrogenase 2 (IDH2) and ATP-citrate Lyase (ACLY) were done. The ACLY knockdown in D492 underwent EMT and was further characterized and shared many aspects of the D492M phenotype.