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14 February 2017
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Teaching is concentrated in the faculties and schools, and the departments deal with research, which is also conducted by institutes and chairs, at the same time responsible for knowledge promotion.
Fatty acid synthase (FAS) is an enzyme responsible for producing new fatty acids. In general, FAS has a low expression in human cells. This enzyme is, however, over-expressed and hyper-activated in the majority of cancers, including breast and lung. Its expression is often correlated with tumour malignancy, a high risk of metastasis and relapse and a low survival rate.
Although there are different specific drugs against HER2+ breast cancer, a high percentage of patients currently experience resistance. A relationship between epidermal growth factor receptor pathways and the FAS pathway has been described, as well as how these pathways may be involved in resistance. Because of this, our laboratory has focused on studying the implication of the FASN and how the inhibition of this enzyme, alone or in combination with the inhibition other targets related with the signalling route of HER2+, can be involved in the resistance to the current therapies, in cellular models and in animals.
This research has been funded since 2008 by different competitive projects, such as the Sociedad Española de Oncología Médica (SEOM - Spanish Medical Oncologist Society), the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN - Ministry of Science and Innovation), the Instituto of Salud Carlos III (Fis - Carlos III Health Institute) and the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness). It has also received money from private companies such as Italfármaco, Wyeth Farma International and Pfizer.
Chemotherapy is currently the only treatment for triple negative breast cancer. Despite a good initial response, a high percentage of patients do not respond well to treatment and relapse. This is why, over the last few years, efforts have increasingly been focused on attempting to determine new, more effective pharmacological treatments for this type of patient.
Our research group proposed and studied fatty acid synthase (FAS) as a possible therapeutic target.
As part of this project, the role of FAS was studied and its possible role as a therapeutic target in TNBC was assessed. Different FAS inhibitors were also developed and assessed in our laboratories. The study results reveal co-treatment with FAS inhibitors and chemotherapy to be a new possible treatment to overcome resistance to chemotherapy. The project has been funded since 2015 thanks to the Fundación Ramón Areces, the Carlos III Health Institute and the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.
Our main interest is acquired resistance in the EGFR receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor domain (EGFR TKIs). We have demonstrated that lung cancer cells show high protein amounts of FAS and that blocking its activity mainly correlates with EGFR response.
Our objective is to determine the role of FAS in the development of EGFR TKI resistance in lung cancer. We work with EGFR TKI sensitive and resistant cell lines in order to find new possible treatments for patients who present resistance to current treatments. The project started in 2017 thanks to the support of the pharmaceutical company Astrazeneca SL.
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