Studying cancer in non-human animals, or comparative cancer research, opens the door to exiting new discoveries and a fuller understanding of and treatment for human cancers. Through animal research, scientists are learning how to protect the fertility of young boys undergoing chemotherapy and developing better-targeted cancer therapies.
Veterinarian and cancer researcher Klementina Fon Tacer was recruited in 2020 to the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine from St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis where she was a research scientist. She received a First-Time Tenure-Track Award from CPRIT.
“Fertility preservation in men who undergo chemotherapy is relatively easy because you can take and preserve sperm,” Fon Tacer says. “But with children we have to preserve immature spermatogonia and develop methods to preserve fertility later in life.”
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Studying cancer in non-human animals, or comparative cancer research, opens the door to exiting new discoveries and a fuller understanding of and treatment for human cancers. Through animal research, scientists are learning how to protect the fertility of young boys undergoing chemotherapy and developing better-targeted cancer therapies.
Veterinarian and cancer researcher Klementina Fon Tacer was recruited in 2020 to the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine from St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis where she was a research scientist. She received a First-Time Tenure-Track Award from CPRIT.
“Fertility preservation in men who undergo chemotherapy is relatively easy because you can take and preserve sperm,” Fon Tacer says. “But with children we have to preserve immature spermatogonia and develop methods to preserve fertility later in life.”
Fon Tacer is interested in stress-protection mechanisms in germ line cells—the cells that pass genetic material on to their progeny. She discovered that the mechanisms that help animals preserve their ability to reproduce during times of stress are also the same ones that cancer cells co-opt for their own self-preservation.
Proteins called cancer/testis antigens are normally expressed only by germ cells, but also appear in various types of cancers. These genes allow cancer cells to better protect themselves and then recover after chemotherapy. Understanding the molecular underpinnings will be crucial for developing better protective strategies for immature sperm in children.
“My initial data suggest that cancer/testis antigens evolved to protect the germ line against stress,” Fon Tacer says. “These pathways are then hijacked by cancer and gives cancer cells benefit to grow or even resist therapies.”
She adds, “These genes are very often expressed in difficult-to-treat cancers with poorer prognoses; and, as they are so specifically expressed only in the germ line, they are very interesting targets because they aren’t normally expressed in other parts of the organism.”
One property of germ cells co-opted by cancer is the ability to maintain stem cells in order to be able to indefinitely produce new cells. Second, spermatogonia also endure metabolic—or nutrient—stress. They are removed from their blood supply and change their metabolism as they differentiate. Likewise, tumor cells grow so fast they outstrip their nutrient supply yet survive under conditions that would kill normal cells. Third, germ cells have evolved to protect themselves from destruction by the body’s own immune system, a property that cancer cells also exhibit.
Understanding how those pathways function in the germ line and are regulated will give important insights into how cancer cells survive, thrive, and multiply.
In addition, Fon Tacer is interested in studying animals that, like humans, get cancer, but show different susceptibility to disease. Melanoma is very malignant in humans and in some types of dogs. On the other hand, nearly every gray horse has a melanoma somewhere on its body; but in horses, the disease is much more benign.
She adds that CPRIT funding was crucial for setting up her laboratory. “We are establishing a lab and new school from scratch, and I was able to purchase state-of-the-art equipment to build a world-class research program right here in Texas,” she says. “It’s been a tremendous help to launch a research program that benefits society.”
Fon Tacer received her veterinary degree and her Ph.D. in biochemistry & molecular biology from the University of Ljubljana. She came to the U.S. in 2006 on a Fulbright fellowship for postdoctoral studies at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She became an instructor there in 2012 after returning to Slovenia for several years. She was hired as a research scientist at St. Jude’s in 2015, when her laboratory moved there from UT Southwestern.
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