Spatiotemporal Modulation of Cell Trafficking via Biomolecular Condensates: Impact on Tumor Invasion and Migration
About the project
Biomolecular condensates (BCs) have emerged as critical regulators of cellular biochemistry. While their physiological roles are increasingly appreciated, their contributions to cancer progression remain largely unexplored. By bringing together the expertises of five teams of ChemCellState, this project aims to uncover and exploit BC functions in membrane mechanics and intracellular trafficking that drive tumor invasion, metastasis, and plasticity.
The research will focus on three membrane-associated structures that cancer cells exploit during disease progression: invadopodia for matrix degradation, caveolae for mechanosignaling, and glycolipid–lectin complexes for endocytosis.
The project is structured around three main objectives:
- Engineer synthetic BCs to reversibly sequester components of caveolae and invadopodia, enabling precise temporal control of their assembly/disassembly;
- Provide structure-function insights into the importance of endogenous BCs in the formation and function of invadopodia, caveolae mechanics, and glycolipid-lectin driven endocytosis;
- Identify small-molecule inhibitors of BC formation through phenotype-based screening.
By integrating novel methodological tools from chemical biology to cell biology, this project will generate fundamental insights into BC-mediated regulation of cancer cell migration and invasion. Ultimately, its aims to open new avenues for targeting these processes in cancer therapy.