CELESTE (Cellular Interactions in Liver Cancer with Spatial Resolution)
Our first Liver Centre of Excellence flagship project CELESTE will look at the role of the liver cell composition and interaction in the development of cancer.
Effective strategies for primary liver cancer early detection are urgently required but knowledge about the biological pathways that drive it is lacking. An in-depth understanding of how normal tissue transforms to become cancerous, and how tumours can weaken and escape from the immune system, would allow scientists to develop new strategies for early detection, treatment and prevention.
CELESTE aims to identify biological characteristics that are present only in cirrhotic patients who have developed cancer and could be used as diagnostic or therapeutic targets. The study is specifically asking whether the type of immune cells, where they are located and how the cells talk to each other differs in normal liver versus cirrhosis, primary and metastatic liver cancer.
To do this the CELESTE team will analyse the liver of individuals with cirrhosis and other liver cancer risk factors, that have or have not primary liver cancer. They will use techniques that look at the expression of RNA (spatial transcriptomics) and protein (MIBI) at a single-cell level, and assess changes in the tissue structure that lead to malignancies. Importantly the team will look at tissue sections that preserve the spatial characteristics so that location can be studied. The results of this study will be integrated into existing public datasets to inform new drug targets.
