Just like healthy cells, cancer cells need oxygen. The uncontrolled growth in malignant tumors results in areas with poor circulation, which means these areas get less oxygen.
If there are many such areas, the patient’s prognosis is poor. Cells that suffer from a limited lack of oxygen will respond to this by making new blood vessels (angiogenesis) and in changes in energy metabolism. This is how these cells try to stay alive. To start this process, the cells undergo molecular changes. The most important molecule in this is the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), which regulates the genes involved in the response to a lack of oxygen (hypoxia). To understand the relationship between lack of oxygen and a poor prognosis, it is important to know about the molecular processes involved in this. In his doctoral dissertation, Eelke Gort describes the regulation of the HIF proteins as well as the regulation of genes by the HIF proteins, which play a role in cancer.
Eelke Gort will receive his PhD from Utrecht University on February 28. The title of his dissertation is “Molecular Response to Hypoxia; from C. elegans to cancer.”