Jan Brábek

• Mission: To elucidate the mechanisms of cancer cell invasiveness and its plasticity.
• Vision: To develop a new category of anti-metastatic drugs – migrastatics.

In solid tumors, invasiveness and metastasis are responsible for more than 90% of all deaths. The Laboratory of Cancer Cell Invasion focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of tumor cell invasiveness and its plasticity, in this area members of the laboratory have made several fundamental discoveries. Recently, we have defined and declared a new category of antitumor agents aimed at inhibiting invasiveness and metastasis – migrastatics. We define molecular and cellular mechanisms that are suitable for the intervention with migrastatic agents and, in cooperation with medicinal chemists, we analyze candidate substances with migrastatic effects. The introduction of migrastatics into antitumor therapy may represent a major breakthrough in the treatment of solid tumors and could be the biggest conceptual advance for antitumor therapy since the introduction of antitumor immunotherapy.