Cancer is the second leading cause of mortality in EU countries, after cardiovascular diseases, with cancer deaths estimated to be at 1.3 million in 2022. Every year, an increasing number of people are diagnosed with the disease, with the number of new cases reaching 2.7 million in 2022. Notably, Europe has a quarter of all cancer cases and less than 10% of the world’s population.
The fight against cancer operates in several key areas. First, the prevention of cancer can be achieved through the decrease of risk factors and the use of vaccines. Secondly, the early detection of all cancers greatly increases the chances for survivorship, so cancer screening is essential. Thirdly, the cancer diagnosis and treatments require more scientific research to offer hope for a cure and better survival rates.
One of the most worrisome cancers is metastatic melanoma, a skin cancer that spread to other parts of the body as it was not detected early enough. Its prognosis is poor, with a median survival of 6 to 9 months, and a 5-year survival rate of 22.5%. Metastatic melanoma is a hard-to-treat disease, as the current therapies have a limited efficacy. For promising immunotherapies of metastatic melanoma, such as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells, the efficiency is limited by the low access to the tumour by the CAR-T cells. This is related to the physical barriers represented by cellular and non-cellular components of the tumour microenvironment.
MELOMANES is a training-by-research project that develops an innovative combined therapy to treat metastatic melanoma. The therapeutic strategy is to facilitate the infiltration of CAR-T cells by using magnetic nanoparticles to damage the tumour microenvironment, by magnetic and optic hyperthermia. The project aims at developing a proof of concept of the combined treatment for metastatic melanoma, while taking into account the safety, sustainability and ethical challenges.
