Amanda Linkous, research associate professor of pharmacology, has been awarded a research grant from the Merck Research Laboratories Scientific Engagement and Emerging Discovery Science (SEEDS) program to identify therapeutic intervention points to prevent the colonization and proliferation of small cell lung cancer and non-small cell lung cancer in the lung and brain.
Though initial treatments of primary lung tumors are occasionally effective, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of lung cancer metastasizes to the brain. Despite their frequency, how tumor cells invade and adapt to the brain is not well understood by scientists. These brain tumors are often resistant to commonly employed drug combinations, making radiation the best option for treatment despite it also causing brain function impairment. Linkous will use 3D organoid models and in-depth computational analyses to capture tumor-tumor and host-tumor interactions to clarify the general principles of brain metastasis in small cell and non-small cell lung cancer.
“Our research proposal is paradigm-shifting. To our knowledge, our organoid models of the lung and brain provide the first humanized, multi-organ model to study the growth of lung cancer within different microenvironments,” Linkous said. “Our proposal is also practice-changing. This research is designed to pinpoint organ-site-specific vulnerabilities of the tumor cells that we can exploit to thwart the systemic spread of this devastating tumor. It is our hope that our findings will significantly impact the future treatment of metastatic lung cancer by allowing clinicians to therapeutically target lung- and brain-specific metastatic tumor cells.” The work also has implications for the treatment of other cancers that grow in the lung and brain.
Linkous’ project will involve gene expression and proteomic analyses of small and non-small cell lung cancer and the identification of the sensitivity of lung and brain tumors to commercially available therapeutic agents. This work will leverage resources from the Vanderbilt Technologies for Advanced Genomics shared resource and Mass Spectrometry Research Center to complete the analyses, and Linkous and her team will regularly connect with Merck scientists to review progress.
The Merck Research Laboratories SEEDS program is an initiative seeking research collaboration with academic researchers to advance the most innovative discoveries for therapeutic targets, pathways, and technologies.
The funding was facilitated by the industry collaborations team in the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation, led by Chris Rowe. The industry collaborations team was established in 2022 to facilitate partnerships with industry to advance research programs.
“Our team’s primary goal is to establish relationships with industry by connecting faculty researchers and industry innovators so the novel research happening at Vanderbilt has maximum impact on society,” Rowe said. “Merck is a valuable partner to us in that respect and we are appreciative of their ongoing support and collaboration.”