CanCell - Center for Cancer Cell Reprogramming

CanCell is a research centre that aims at uncovering the “Achilles’ heels” of cancer cells and target these for reprogramming cancer cells into harmless cells. Cancer remains a major disease group which causes suffering of patients and their relatives and imposes a heavy burden on the health care system. There is thus an urgent need to improve cancer treatment through research, but our recent ability to sequence cancer genomes from thousands of patients has so far had limited impact on cancer therapy. A major obstacle to translating “big data” information from DNA sequencing into clinical benefit is our incomplete understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which genetic and epigenetic modifications affect tumor cells, and how the tumor microenvironment and somatic tissues promote cancer progression. CanCell’s vision is to elucidate changes in cellular pathways that are rewired during cancer development, defined as “cancer cell programmes”, including cell signalling, metabolism, membrane dynamics, and genome/chromatin organisation. The centre’s unique strategy is to reveal cross-talk between these programmes via close cooperation between six research groups with expertise on the individual processes. Innovative methods and collaborations with a strong interdisciplinary team of associate members and world-leading visiting professors will further enhance the impact of CanCell’s research. CanCell's strategy is to unite the forces of researchers with expertise on distinct cancer cell programmes in order to identify their cross-talk.