TOM – 19.10.2016

Venue: Biomedicum 1, Seminar room 1-2

Timing: 15:30 onwards

Presenter: Gopal Peddinti, Senior Researcher, FIMM

Genome scale metabolic modeling of cancer cells

Genome based research in cancer has identified a plethora of mutational events involved in the initiation and progression of cancers. Surprisingly, the huge diversity of genomic alterations appear to converge in altering the tumor metabolism. Therefore, “starving the tumor cells of their energy supplies” (i.e. targeting tumor metabolism) appears to be a universal bullet to treat cancers. To explore the therapeutic potential of metabolism, genome scale metabolic models (GSMM) emerged as powerful in silico tools in cancer systems biology research for predicting biomarkers, therapeutic targets, and treatment side effects.

GSMMs are stoichiometric models providing a comprehensive view of cell metabolism. Reconstruction and simulation of GSMMs is achieved by constraint based modeling framework. COnstraints Based Reconstruction and Analysis (COBRA) is a comprehensive toolbox used widely in metabolic modeling. I will briefly review the GSMM approach, some of its successful applications, and show the COBRA matlab toolbox (https://opencobra.github.io/cobratoolbox/).

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