Inês Godet will give the lecture titled “Fate-mapping intratumoral hypoxia to determine its role in metastasis”, under the American Corner @Técnico.

• 2nd December, 15:00 – Online
• Speaker: Inês Godet(Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering Department, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA; Técnico alumna)
• Title: “Fate-mapping intratumoral hypoxia to determine its role in metastasis.”
• Abstract
  One in every eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, and although the 5-year survival rate for non-metastatic breast cancer is 91%, patients with metastatic breast cancer face a 27% 5-year survival rate. About 90% of solid tumors are hypoxic (oxygen deprived) due to the rapid proliferation of cancer cells and insufficient viable vasculature. The oxygen content in normal breast tissue is 8%, however, breast cancer tissue has an oxygen content of 1%. Hypoxia-inducible factors 1 and 2 regulate the transcriptional response to hypoxia, activating more than 1000 genes, and leading to a more aggressive cancer phenotype. While it is well established that hypoxic tumors correlate with cancer metastasis and patient mortality, the current methods to detect hypoxia do not allow discerning post-hypoxic cells and determining their fate.
  To overcome this limitation, we designed a novel approach to fate-map hypoxic cancer cells in vivo in order to determine their cellular response to physiological O2 gradients as well as to quantify their contribution to metastasis. Our novel system based on a Lox-Cre gene editing mechanism is activated under hypoxia, and drives a color switch in the cells by cleaving out a DsRed reporter protein (red fluorescence) and causing the permanent activation of a GFP protein (green fluorescence).
• Moderator: professor Nuno Bernardes(IST/DBE; iBB).