Investigating the mechanisms of action of intracellular anaerobic pathogens on human host cancer cell metabolic networks

前列腺癌(PCA)是全球第二常见的男性癌症，每年约有30.7万名男性死亡。我们知道，细菌和病毒等感染性因素与宫颈癌、胃癌和膀胱癌等多种癌症的发生有关。前列腺癌的病因和晚期疾病的发展仍不清楚，但有很好的证据表明，感染性因素可能是一个原因。在这个项目中，候选人将研究细菌如何通过代谢网络影响前列腺癌细胞。他们将进行计算分析，以揭示潜在的作用机制，并生成细菌和人类癌细胞相互作用的基因组规模的代谢模型。他们将进行实验，以确定细胞和人类前列腺组织外植体中与前列腺癌有关的代谢谱，并将使用RNAseq研究细菌和人类组织中的表达谱变化。这项研究有可能揭示细菌是如何导致前列腺癌的，并揭示预防或阻止侵袭性癌症的新的治疗可能性。

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second most common cancer in men worldwide and ~307,000 men die every year. We know that infectious agents, such as bacteria and viruses, are involved in the development of a variety of cancers such as cervical, stomach, and bladder cancer. The causes of PCa and the development of advanced disease remains obscure, but there is good evidence that infectious agents could be one cause. In this project the candidate will examine how bacteria effect prostate cancer cells through metabolic networks. They will perform computational analyses to reveal potential mechanisms of action and generate genome-scale metabolic models of bacteria and human cancer cell interactions. They will perform experiments to determine the metabolomic profiles linked with prostate cancer in cells and human prostate tissue explants, and they will investigate expression profile changes in bacteria and human tissue using RNAseq. This research has the potential to reveal how bacteria causes prostate cancer to develop and reveal new treatment possibilities to prevent or halt aggressive cancer.