Dr Marc Bracke, Laboratory of Experimental Cancerology, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Gent, BELGIUM

The Laboratory of Experimental Cancerology of University of Ghent has close links also with the Ghent University Hospital, a major regional centre for cancer treatment with 3000 adult cancer patients treated each year.

The UGent team has a long tradition in the development of invasion assays in vitro. Recent experiments have shown that N-cadherin is the major invasion promoter for certain cancer cell lines (retinoblastoma, neuroblastoma, melanoma and osteosarcoma). Two tools have been used so far to provide evidence for the role of N-cadherin in invasion: transfection of cells with the N-cadherin gene and specific functional neutralisation of N-cadherin with well characterised monoclonal antibodies. Evident targets for anti-invasive therapy are the transcription factors that interact with the promoter of the N-cadherin gene in breast carcinoma cells.

UGent found that heregulin, a growth factor in breast carcinoma that acts as a ligand for the HER3/HER2 receptor complex, is able to downregulate N-cadherin expression by silencing the promoter of the gene, and this can lead to the identification of the transcription factor(s) responsible for N-cadherin expression in breast cancer. Recently, cancers cells were found to secrete soluble N-cadherin ectodomains, which are good candidates for circulating tumor (invasion and metastasis) markers in patients.

Activities in MetaBre: molecular mechanisms of E-cadherins in angiogenesis and invasion, development of diagnostic techniques