FCF Funded Projects

Creating a fibrolamellar cancer dependency map

Status: Active

Timeframe: 2020 – 2023

Goal: Create a comprehensive list of potential drug targets for FLC

Principal Investigator: Jesse Boehm, PhD

Study overview: This project is part of the Broad Institute’s Rare Cancer Dependency Map Initiative. The project has three main goals to identify potential FLC therapeutics:

  1. Developing new cell models of FLC for the research community. Harnessing the Broad Institute’s Cancer Cell Line Factory laboratory and its combinatorial media screening technology will allow the team to systematically determine the conditions necessary to grow FLC samples as three-dimensional organoid models. They will also work in coordination with the FCF-sponsored Biobank to create a unified pipeline by which any patient can direct tissue to FLC researchers.
  2. Utilizing the developed cell culture models of FLC to create a comprehensive list of potential drug targets and to identify existing drugs that may have therapeutic potential against FLC.
  3. Empowering the entire FLC research community by sharing all developed genomically characterized and clinically annotated cell models and by making all the data and biologist-friendly analysis tools freely available online, pre-publication at DepMap.org.

If fully successful, this effort will nominate high priority targets for drug discovery as well as new drug repurposing hypotheses.