Amanda Dann, MD

Sarcomas are very rare types of cancer that develop from soft tissues- things like muscle, fat, and bone. Because they are so rare, they are often not caught early and have spread to other parts of the body by the time they are diagnosed. Once this happens, they can be very hard to treat. Our existing drugs often do not work very well to shrink or eliminate the cancer. My lab is working to develop new treatments for sarcoma, focused on targeting the nutrients these tumors need to grow and spread. Fast-growing tumors like sarcomas require more, and often different, nutrients than the normal tissues around them. This allows us to use drugs that target these pathways to slow down or shrink tumors while minimizing side effects to healthy tissue. We are able to measure how nutrients are used in patient tumors and using these findings to help refine treatment strategies. We have shown that sarcomas seem to rely heavily on certain nutrients- such as the amino acid glutamine, an important building block for many important cell functions. We are studying how new drugs that block the ability of cancer cells to use glutamine can be used to treat sarcoma. The goal of this work is to develop new treatments to help improve the lives of patients with sarcoma.