What do ketones and prostate cancer progression have in common? Could the way the body transforms one steroid to another be key to some cancer outcomes?
Those were some of the questions pondered by attendees at the Miller School’s third annual Miami Symposium on Human Metabolism. The symposium’s host and founder, Nima Sharifi, M.D., scientific director at Desai Sethi Urology Institute (DSUI) and a member of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, started the meeting in 2023 because he saw a gap in gatherings connecting people who study mechanisms and interventions in human disease. The meeting brings together scientists from diverse backgrounds who share a passion for human metabolism and physiology.
Miller School investigators were joined by researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins, Weill Cornell Medicine, Harvard University and Cleveland Clinic, among other institutions.
“Whether you’re talking about what occurs in the germline-inherited DNA that leads to changes in metabolism or about the effects of dietary interventions, the way these things work comes down to basic molecular metabolic transformations that have pinpoint mechanisms,” Dr. Sharifi said.
That thread — from basic chemistry to a disease — can weave through to multiple diseases and aspects of physiology.
For example, Laura Sena, M.D., Ph.D., a prostate cancer oncologist at Johns Hopkins, shared her work on a seven-day water-only diet in men with prostate cancer that leads to a profound increase in ketogenesis. Dr. Sena connected with another speaker, Zhipeng Wang, Ph.D., DSUI assistant professor of urology and Sylvester member, who has identified a new way in which ketones modify proteins.
“The spirit of this meeting is to bring everyone together in the same room, in a creative and scientifically rigorous format,”
Another example of connections that might not otherwise happen: Dr. Sharifi presented novel work on alternative androgen synthesis pathways in prostate cancer. Alicia Morgans, M.D., M.P.H., who leads cancer survivorship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University, shared research on the side effects of hormone-deprivation therapies in prostate cancer and how to manage them from an endocrine standpoint. Charles Ryan, M.D., a genitourinary medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, presented on biomarkers of steroid uptake and conversion that may be relevant to prostate cancer outcomes.
This year’s meeting wasn’t all about cancer. Zoltan Pierre Arrany, M.D., Ph.D., a physiology professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, presented on interventional cardiac metabolic pathophysiology.
As word gets out to researchers from around the world, Dr. Sharifi said he believes the growing symposium’s connections will lead to profound health care changes.
“The spirit of this meeting is to bring everyone together in the same room, in a creative and scientifically rigorous format,” he said.
