Description

Tirosh will comprehensively characterize the cellular diversity of NETs through single-cell genomic technologies and perform extensive analyses to compare NET composition with healthy tissues and other cancer types to improve our understanding of tumor behavior.

What question will the researchers try to answer?

Can single-cell genomic analysis of small intestinal and lung NETs improve our understanding of intercellular interactions contributing to the development, growth, spread, and evolution of tumors?

Why is this important?

Understanding NETs at this level of analysis will provide new insights into the many different cell types that comprise a single NET and may ultimately contribute to uncovering new genes that may lead to improved treatment options that may overcome drug resistance.

What will researchers do?

Gene expression analysis will be carried out at the single-cell level, which will provide new insights into the cellular makeup of NET tumors.

How might this improve the treatment of NETs?

Charting the cellular diversity within NETs could advance the understanding and treatment of NETs through the identification of: NET cell-of-origin, mechanisms that enable metastasis, causes of drug resistance, and the potential for immunotherapies.

What is the next step?

The enormous amount of new data generated from this project would serve as a foundation for a broad range of studies by many different disciplines exploring causes and treatments of NETs.