Dr Marie-Odile Parat: Can opioids administered to cancer surgery patients modulate long-term recurrence or metastasis?

Speaker: 

Dr Marie-Odile Parat

Abstract:

The possibility that perioperative medications can modulate the risk of tumour recurrence or metastasis is the object of intense research. Opioids have been suspected to play a deleterious role, due to their immune-suppressive effects however opioids have also been documented to prevent tumour growth and metastasis. To this complex field, our laboratory has contributed mostly data indicating that morphine is protective. In a syngeneic mouse experimental metastasis model, morphine short term administration reduced tumour load in the lungs, and prevented the increase in circulating matrix proteases associated with tumour burden. Using co-culture models, we demonstrated that morphine reduces the pro-invasive and pro-angiogenic interaction between cancer cells and stromal cells and prevents macrophage alternate polarization. Lastly, recent data indicate that toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) can respond to opioids and we have demonstrated that after morphine administration, circulating morphine and its metabolites, including the MOR-inactive M3G, are active at TLR4, with potential consequences on the regulation of tumour growth and metastasis in vivo.

Speaker bio:

Dr Marie-Odile Parat joined the School of Pharmacy as Senior Lecturer in December 2007. She obtained her Pharm.D. from University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France, a Masters in Cutaneous Biology from University Claude Bernard in Lyon, France and her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France. She further has post graduate diplomas in the fields of Biomedical and Industrial Pharmacy, Photobiology, Pharmaceutical Management, and Public Health.

MO did her Pharmaceutical Residency at the University Hospitals of Grenoble, France in the Sterile Pharmaceutical Supplies Headquarters, the Department of Nuclear Medicine, and the Laboratory Medicine Department of Biochemistry. Attracted by international working experience, she carried out research within the R&D laboratories of Estee Lauder in Melville, NY. She further worked for the United Nations International Trade center in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was the Product Specialist on market information for pharmaceutical raw materials/essential drugs for three years in collaboration with the World Health Organization.

The long term goal of the Parat laboratory is to provide insight for novel cancer therapies. A basic science team focusses on endothelial and cancer cell migration, invasion, angiogenesis, and specialized plasma membrane subdomains termed caveolae. A translational axis of research evaluates novel mechanisms by which opioids administered to cancer patients modulate the risk of long term tumour recurrence and metastasis.