A major project with researchers from the Melbourne based Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre hopes to better understand the mode of action of new generation anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Rick Pearson and his team have access to over 50 different cancer cell lines with defects in specific signaling pathways and varied metastatic potential. These cell lines are being treated with a library of drug compounds to determine the associated metabolic response by using a range of analytical approaches, including gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Alterations in the steady state levels of key metabolites can be used to identify specific metabolic processes that are altered in the cancerous cell line as well as those that are being targeted by the drugs. This approach can be used to identify novel biomarkers for different cancer cell types and aid diagnosis.

This project has involved in close collaboration between researchers at Peter MacCallum and Metabolomics Australia’s Bio21 Institute. Researchers from both laboratories have been involved in the development of new methods for metabolically quenching the cancer cells, metabolite extractions, experimental design and data analysis.Data analysis remains a major challenge with ‘omic investigations, including metabolomics datasets, however, the Metabolomics Australia bioinformatics team at Melbourne University is making considerable progress. The team is developing a range of statistical and multivariant analysis to identify the metabolic pathways potentially affected. This data will be coupled with other ‘omic’ datasets, including transcript and proteomic analyses generated by the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre research groups, to provide a comprehensive view of the cellular response of different cancer cell lines to new drugs.