A spotlight on colorectal cancer research

Posted in Announcements

Advanced colorectal cancer (CRC) often becomes more aggressive and resistant to treatment, creating major hurdles that make it difficult to find effective treatments for patients. To address these challenges, scientific and clinical members of the Ruesch Center, the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Hackensack Meridian Health Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI) are working together to identify new ways to target the biological changes—involving genes, RNA, and proteins—that drive CRC growth, thereby creating opportunities to improve patient care.

In October 2022, 14 scientists and clinicians at Georgetown and CDI formed the CRC Research Group. This group meets each month to collectively 1) develop resources, build collaborations, and prepare funding applications, 2) integrate new data and results, and 3) focus research on solving clinical challenges in CRC. Since 2022, the number of group members has more than doubled to 34, including postdoctoral fellows, scientific research staff, and clinicians across both institutions, with CRC expertise spanning basic and translational research. With our broad range of expertise, from cell and molecular biology to cancer prevention and epidemiology, CRC Research Group members are united by one overarching goal: to pursue novel scientific breakthroughs to improve outcomes for CRC patients, helping them live better and longer lives.

For example, CRC group members are working together to develop model systems that closely mimic what happens in real CRC patients. This helps them find novel ways to directly interfere with protein signaling pathways that drive tumor growth and spread) and to overcome treatment resistance in CRC primary tumors and metastases (tumors that have spread to other parts of the body). In a joint effort across the CRC Research Group, the laboratories of Dr. David Robbins (Georgetown) and Dr. Kevin Tong (CDI) are establishing CRC tumor organoids (tiny versions of each patient’s tumor) created from cells collected from the CRCs of patients treated by clinicians within our hospital networks. The organoids can mimic each patient’s tumor biology. With a growing bank of diverse organoids, we have a powerful resource for testing therapeutic agents, identifying the tumor’s unique weaknesses that can be targeted with targeted therapy, and building on our understanding of the basic biological processes of CRC. As a joint effort, the laboratories of Dr. Alvin Makohon-Moore (CDI) and Dr. Tong are growing patient-derived CRC organoids in special devices called bioreactors to study how cancer cells spread and become resistant to treatment. Together, these efforts aim to define novel molecular processes that can be targeted to overcome treatment resistance in CRC.

These ongoing studies underscore the importance of the CRC Research Group and the power of the collaborative network connecting Georgetown, the Ruesch Center, and Hackensack Meridian Health. Our scientists and clinicians are working together, sharing resources and ideas, to speed up the translation of laboratory discoveries into better ways to prevent, detect, and treat CRC for patients at these institutions and beyond.