Prof. Dr. Olivier Gires

Understanding disease progression in head and neck carcinomas

Over 600,000 new instances of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) are diagnosed each year worldwide with increasing figures. Despite significant investments in developing HNSCC therapies, the 5-year survival rate of advanced HNSCC patients remains below 45%. A significant factor in metastasis formation in HNSCC is the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT; the transformation of tumor cells from an epithelial to a mesenchymal phenotype) that supports tumor cell invasion and resistance to therapy.
The Gires Lab focuses on deciphering molecular aspects of early aspects of local invasion, which contribute to the formation of isolated buds of few tumor cells detached from the main tumor and, thereby, promote recurrences despite multi-modal therapy. The group uses a combination of 3D models of invasion of HNSCC, next-generation sequencing techniques (bulk, single-cell, spatial transcriptomics), cell-tracing systems, and ex vivo tissue culture slices for this purpose.
Initial findings suggest the existence of distinct niches with defined cellular composition within HNSCC. Concentrating on a niche comprising malignant cells in partial EMT (pEMT), the group has identified potential cell-cell interactions that influence disease progression along with regulatory ligand-receptor pairs.

Aims

1. In-depth expression and function analysis of ligand-receptor pair in vitro using 3D-models of local invasion.
2. Exploration of the molecular function role and potential benefit of newly identified target ligand-receptor pairs to determine their role in EMT, metastases formation, and test their druggability in HNSCC pre-clinical models.

Must-have lab skills

• Cell culture of eukaryotic cell lines
• Molecular biology techniques (qRT-PCR, Immunobloting, FACS)
• Interest in bioinformatic analysis of RNA sequencing datasets