Germany’s Merck has entered into a three-year research pact with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) focused on cancer metabolism.

The collaboration is aiming to investigate mechanisms by which cancer cells generate energy and growth-enabling building blocks, in the hole of discovering new therapeutic targets and biomarkers. 

“It has become clear that cancer cells engage metabolic pathways to support growth and treatment resistance,” noted Andree Blaukat, Head of the Translational Innovation Platform Oncology at Merck. 

“Together with EMBL, we have the opportunity to characterise this phenomenon on the molecular level which will be instrumental for the development of novel therapies that target metabolic pathways in cancer”.

EMBL expertise in modelling and bioinformatics will be combined with experimental approaches to uncover these metabolic pathways and their control mechanisms. EMBL will also utilize the cutting-edge equipment of its Genomics and Metabolomics Core Facilities to resolve the transcriptional and metabolic profiles of the samples for the study.