About her Postdoctoral project

In cancer there is a link between metabolic and epigenetic changes but the mechanisms involved are unknown due to technical limitations. There are no methods to study concomitantly metabolism and epigenetics in tumour-derived cells of patients. Monocyte derived myeloid cells are sensitive to their environment and can differentiate into cells with efferocytic, angiogenic or inflammatory functions. Glioblastoma (GBM) tumors are ideal to study metabolism and epigenetics because it is characterized by different microenvironments: the necrotic region, the angiogenic region and the edematized region that are infiltrated by monocytes. Our objectives are 1) to create a complete metabolic map of the three GBM regions using SCENITH; 2) to identify the metabolic and epigenetic signatures of the myeloid cells; and 3) to identify regulators that mechanistically link metabolism and epigenetics. We will exploit a comprehensive set of propietary bioinformatic and wet lab tools to study the metabolic state

(MitoXplorer and SCENITH) and to find transcriptional regulators and annotating Epigenetic data (AnnoMiner) to study metabolism in single cells ex-vivo from cancer patient samples. This project will allow us to identify pathways that can be used to target myeloid cells and modulate their function in the context of GBM.