Objectives

Cutting-Edge Studies and Insights into Cancer Metabolism

The Kavita and Lalit Bahl Center for Metabolomics and Imaging at Stony Brook Cancer Center is helping scientists and physicians learn more about the characteristics and behavior of each patient’s specific cancer. This knowledge is leading to greater precision, personalization and efficacy of care when diagnosing and treating patients with cancer.

Specific goals for the center are to:

  • Discover diagnostic cancer biomarkers and monitor them during treatment
  • Uncover new cellular targets for cancer treatment
  • Enable clinicians to track a patient’s response to treatment and thus tailor the treatment for each individual 
  • Identify the complex metabolic pathways in cancer cells, enabling a more targeted and individualized therapy
  • Determine how epidemiological and lifestyle factors are linked to increased cancer risk, with the objective of preventing a cancer from ever starting

The combination of cancer research, medical imaging and metabolomics at the center may also:

  • Help spur a change in the culture of cancer research
  • Accelerate efforts to progress toward the end of one or more cancers
  • Unleash new discoveries and breakthroughs for other deadly disease
  • Determine how epidemiological and lifestyle factors such as nutrition, obesity and tobacco use are linked to cancer risk as a way to devise preventive measures