Project description
Targeting nerve invasion to treat aggressive pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an exceptionally aggressive cancer, resistant to traditional treatments and immunotherapy. Nerve invasion, the proliferation of cancer cells along nerves and within layers of nerve fibres, is a hallmark feature of PDAC. Patients that present with nerve invasion have a higher risk of tumour recurrence, suppressed anti-tumour immune responses and ultimately a worse prognosis. The EU-funded NERVASION project aims to identify the cellular and molecular pathways dysregulated in the cancer-invaded nerves and the therapeutic potential of their targeting. The research involves the application of transcriptomics technology to human and murine PDAC tumour tissue sections in conditions preserving spatial information in the dynamic microenvironment.
Objective
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an exceptionally aggressive cancer with a 5-year survival rate below 10%. It is resistant to traditional treatments and unresponsive to immunotherapy. New insights into the biology of PDAC are needed to identify novel therapeutic targets. Nerve invasion, defined as the presence of cancer cells along nerves and within different layers of nerve fibres, is a hallmark feature of PDAC. Patients that show signs of nerve invasion have a worse prognosis, higher risk of tumour recurrence, and suppressed anti-tumour immune responses. During PDAC, nerves form a dynamic microenvironment in which glial cells, neurons, stroma cells, cancer cells, and immune cells interact. The mechanistic basis of this communication and its effects on cancer progression remain undefined. Thus, in this project, cutting-edge transcriptomics technology preserving spatial information will be applied to human and murine PDAC tumour tissue sections. The cellular and molecular pathways dysregulated explicitly within cancer-invaded nerves will be identified, and the therapeutic potential of their targeting will be controlled in vitro and in vivo. The findings generated within this project could provide novel treatment strategies for PDAC and essential insights into the basic biology of cancer-nerve-immune interactions during tumorigenesis.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland