Shout out from www.MitoWorld.org to the Cell Metabolism team led by editor Salvatore Fabbiano for recognizing and facilitating our Mito-Cancer session at the Multifaceted Mitochondria Symposium (June 21-23, Glasgow). This included Cell Metabolism publishing our Commentary, Cancer as a window into mitochondrial biology.

For the Cell Metabolism Commentary and Symposium session, editor Fabbiano selected Gordon Freedman from Mitoworld  and Kelsey Fisher-Wellman, PhD, Wake Forest University, to moderate a panel of experts including Thomas MacVicar, PhD, Professor of Mitochondrial Biology, University of Glasgow; Laura C. Greaves, PhD, Professor of Mitochondrial Biology, Newcastle University; Payam A. Gammage, PhD, Professor of Mitochondrial Biology, University of Glasgow; Stephen W. G. Tait, PhD, Professor of Cancer Biology, University of Glasgow.

This topic arose from questions we had at www.MitoWorld.org about the hundreds of millions of years cancers and tumors have had to evolve to import mitochondria, reprogram them, and make them more efficient to drive their growth. While these lines of research are simultaneously being investigated by cancer researchers and mitochondrial researchers, there has been very little cross-fertilization. This intersection of fields has much to teach us with regards to understanding cancer, mitochondria, and applications across not only mitochondrial disease, but also a broader base of diseases, dysfunctions and aging.

MitoWorld had been in the crossfire of conversations and contentions about whether mitochondria meaningfully move between cells or whether this reported behavior is anecdotal. It occurred to us that cancer is an evolutionary and physiological laboratory for this question, and others of mitochondrial plasticity. Given that mitochondria composition, state and function can differ from organ to organ, within organs, and across the range of cancers and tumors, we further wondered if this variation could be classified, stored in aggregate databases and be made of use to any community exploring mitochondria roles in disease, health and physiology. Hence, the birth of the Mito-Cancer Atlas Project, which aims to do just that.

We were not alone in this line of reasoning. Kelsey Fisher-Wellman, PhD, is at Wake Forest University and Atrium Health, where he runs his Cancer Metabolism Lab. Kelsey was well underway in building a mito-cancer atlas and typecasting mitochondrial differentiation looking for targeting windows.

“Nearly a decade ago, I started my laboratory on a simple premise: not all mitochondria are the same. Rather, mitochondria are specialized according to the physiological demands of their host cell. Before we ever made a measurement in cancer, we proved this concept using a first-of-its-kind physiological omics platform that we termed Mitochondrial Diagnostics. Our work has defined mitochondrial specialization across normal tissues and our discovery of exploitable mitochondrial vulnerabilities in AML provide proof-of-concept for a much larger vision. The Mito-Cancer Atlas is the logical next step: a systematic effort to map the physiological diversity of cancer mitochondria across all tumor types.” Kelsey Fisher-Wellman, PhD, Wake Forest University, Atrium Health

MitoWorld also joined forces with Phillip West, PhD, at the Jackson Laboratory, where he is Associate Professor, Co-Program Leader, JAX Cancer Center and Principal Investigator of the West Lab, which explores immune and inflammatory responses to genetic disorder and aging related diseases.

“I see The Jackson Laboratory as a natural strategic partner for the Atlas. JAX is supported by an NCI-designated Cancer Center and has the genetic model infrastructure, computational scale, and translational reach to move nominated targets from hypothesis to validated biology. My laboratory has spent the past decade studying how mitochondria impact immunity and inflammation in cancer and other aging-related diseases. Overall, our work argues that mitochondria are key to every aspect of cancer growth, metastasis, treatment toxicity, and long-term survivorship.” Phillip West, PhD, the Jackson Laboratory

To make a mitochondria-cancer typecasting and a mitochondrial atlas for this activity possible, MitoWorld and its collaborative platform, MITOS Global, formed a formal partnership with Heureka Labs, a Duke University spinout of Matthew Hirschey, PhD, where the Hirschey Lab investigates cellular nutrient sensing and metabolism using computational approaches to understand how metabolic pathways regulate health and disease.

“Modern cancer research labs generate biological data faster than they can process it. Insights sit buried in archives, experiments are repeated in silos, and findings aren’t structured for reuse across scientific networks. Institutions have turned to AI for a solution, but general-purpose language models are built to summarize what is already written, not to reason over what a lab has actually measured — and when pushed toward scientific inference, they aren’t able to identify the novel relationships in underexplored domains that drive impactful discoveries. That gap is exactly why Heureka exists. Our platform lets scientists run end-to-end projects — generating hypotheses, mining the literature, designing experiments, analyzing results, and interpreting findings — using models grounded in empirical biology for deeper insights.” Ioan Bolohan, CEO, Heureka Labs

MitoWorld, Fisher-Wellman and our Mito-Cancer Atlas project welcome mitochondria and cancer researchers interested in cataloging the richness of mitochondria states and plasticity in the range of cancers and tumors. We are currently working on a new website called the MitoCancer Frontier.

Previous Mito-Cancer www.MitoBlog posts are found here.