Dr. Aldema Sas-Chen Awarded ERC Grant for Breakthrough Cancer Research on Ribosome Diversity

The Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research would like to congratulate Dr. Aldema Sas-Chen on winning the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant for her inspiring project titled "Unraveling Ribosome Heterogeneity: Implications for Metastasis and Beyond."

Ribosomes are the molecular factories responsible for producing proteins in cells. Advances in recent years have revealed that not all ribosomes are identical in their composition and activity. Some ribosomes can produce proteins faster than others, and some may tend to produce certain subsets of proteins.

This heterogeneity represents another, yet-to-be-fully-understood, level of gene regulation - the mechanisms that control which genes will be translated into proteins in each cell, thereby contributing to the specific identity and function of different cells.

New Insights into Ribosome Roles in Metastasis

Dr. Sas-Chen’s new ERC-funded, ambitious project aims to understand how this heterogeneity plays a role in cancer, specifically in the development of metastatic cancer.

By creating a comprehensive map of changes in ribosomes across different tumors and contexts, Dr. Sas-Chen plans to shed light on how tumors rely on various ribosomal features to adapt and spread effectively to different tissues, leading to metastasis.

This understanding could potentially enable the development of precise diagnostic tools for profiling ribosomal heterogeneity in tumors, predicting which organs are more likely to be affected by metastases, and novel, groundbreaking therapeutics that disrupt the function of molecules involved in creating the specialized ribosomes necessary for cancer to metastasize, thereby preventing tumors from spreading throughout the body.