Section Genomic Instability

Exploring genomic instability as Achilles’ heel of cancer in cancer Section

Exploring genomic instability as Achilles’ heel of cancer in cancer

We aim to understand the biology of cancer and to find new ways to improve cancer treatment, for example by exploiting traits specific to cancer. Genomic instability is such a potential target. In this theme we use all tools available to us to understand genomic instability and exploit it in cancer therapy.

Tumour cells are known to divide at a very quick pace, and errors during duplication of genomic content are easily made. On the one side, these errors provide an evolutionary benefit compared to healthy cells. On the other side, the errors are unique to the tumour cells and can be specifically targeted.

Within the Medical Oncology research theme Genomic Instability, we aim to improve cancer treatment by exploiting this genomic instability as a cancer trait. We study genomic instability both on the level of fundamental biology as well as in context of various types of cancer, which are notoriously hard to treat, such as triple negative breast cancer, ovarian cancer and glioblastoma.

Using a combination of big data, laboratory research, molecular imaging and early clinical trials we aim to find new targets, uncover how they work, and test their potential as therapeutic targets using experimental lab research and test their application in patient care.

Relevance

How our research benefits to society

Over the past two decades, genomic instability has gained attention as a potential target for cancer treatment. Newly developed drugs targeting genomic instability, such as PARP-inhibitors, WEE1-inhibitors and ATR-inhibitors have found their way into the clinic, or are being tested in the clinic and show promising results.

Innovations in cancer treatment have shown that a personalised approach is extremely promising to treat individual patients. This is why it has become very important to understand the biology of individual cancers to be able to select those patients most likely to benefit from a particular treatment, and potentially save others from unnecessary treatment, side-effects and costs.

Research performed within the Genomic Instability theme of the Molecular Oncology department, often in close collaboration with other national and international research groups, has contributed greatly to these new developments of drugs and patient selection.

Key aspects of this research include the use of bioinformatics and artificial intelligence to extract useful information from big data. The same techniques are also applied to find common genomic signatures in tumours, which can help in selecting tumours for a specific treatment.
Using laboratory experiments, we aim to elucidate the mechanism of genomic instability and the consequences of genomic instability at the cellular level. Understanding these mechanisms can lead to potential new targets to treat cancer. Moreover, it may help in selecting those patients most likely to benefit from particular treatments and find new targets for patients.
Within the Medical Oncology Department, we study genomic instability in patient samples and we participate in multicentre clinical trials to test new treatment or treatment combinations. Moreover, we have a particularly strong track record in research into innovative molecular imaging to visualize treatment targets directly in patient tumours. This technique can be directly applied to find suitable patient groups for a drug or to monitor efficacy of a treatment.