The Group of Metabolism and Signaling directs its research to investigate the biological interaction between metabolism and cell signaling in human cells, a fundamental aspect to better understand how these processes are dysregulated in diseases, particularly in cancer. Recently, our research group has identified a new mechanism of cell death induced by nutritional imbalance, which we have called “glutamoptosis”.

During glutamoptosis, the unbalanced inhibition of autophagy under nutrient restrictive conditions causes a non-canonical induction of cell death by apoptosis in cancer cells. However, the physiological consequences of glutamoptosis in both disease and normal cell homeostasis are unclear. The goal of our research is to determine whether glutamoptosis and nutritional imbalance (systemic or in the tumor microenvironment) can be used as a revolutionary strategy to prevent cancer progression. Using both in vitro and in vivo approaches, we aim at determining whether glutamoptosis induction can be used to prevent cancer progression and invasion (metastasis).