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High throughput phylogeography of tumors: how the tissue environment influences cancer evolution?

Objective

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a dynamic ecosystem wherein tumor cells, immune cells and stromal cells interact and evolve. One of the primary characteristics of cancer progression is the diversification, selection and expansion of tumor sub-clones in manner that largely depends on the TME, e.g. through immune responses or metabolic crosstalk. Advances in single-cell and spatial genomics provide exciting opportunities for studying how tumors evolve in their tissue context, by lending an information-rich perspective on which cell subsets are present and how they might interact. However, fundamental questions, which require the knowledge of how single tumor cells are related sub-clonally, remain challenging to study through that perspective. Fundamentally - what characterizes the immediate cellular environment of successful subclones?

Here, we develop transcriptional phylogeography - a paradigm for studying tumor development in-situ, on a transcriptome-wide scale, and at single cell resolution. Our work will leverage studies by us and others that utilized CRISPR/Cas9 mutations coupled with single cell RNA sequencing to infer the lineage structure of thousands of single cells at a time. Adapting this system for in-situ profiling, we will generate the first of its kind phylogeography dataset of a tumor model. This data will allow us to identify tissue locations that harbor critical sub-clonal properties such as unrestrained growth, dedifferentiation, and metastatic seeding, and thereby investigate - through the lens of high throughput genomics- how the TME is associated with these properties. We will also identify and offer solutions for outstanding analytical questions in this nascent area, from lineage inference given sparse data to characterizing the metabolic aspects of tumor-TME cross talk. Together, these studies will help establish new causal links between the TME and tumor evolution and lay the foundation for transcriptional phylogeography analysis.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2022-COG

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Host institution

WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 000 000,00
Address
HERZL STREET 234
7610001 Rehovot
Israel

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Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 000 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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