Investigating the metabolic consequences resulting from the oncogenic activation of the PI3K-AKT pathway

Abstract

The phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) pathway is one of the most commonly activated pathways in a variety of cancers and it has recently been highlighted as one of the primary modulators of cell metabolism. This has opened promises and challenges for the development of therapeutic strategies to target metabolism in cancer cells harbouring mutations in the PI3K pathway. Through an inducible “exon switch” approach, our laboratory has previously generated mice ubiquitously expressing a mutation in Pik3ca, the gene coding for the subunit p110alpha of PI3K. By using this mouse model (UbCreERPik3caH1047R) our laboratory has shown that mutations in the PI3K pathway lead to dramatic severe defects in..