Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Engineering the immunosuppressive microenvironment in mesothelioma with targeted LipidNanoParticles encapsulating self-amplifying RNA

Project description

Innovative immunotherapy for the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a highly aggressive disease and standard chemotherapy treatment achieves an overall survival of 12 months. Anti–programmed cell death 1 protein immunotherapy has a low response rate and does not improve the patient's survival due to the immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment. The EU-funded OncoNanoR project aims to develop innovative immunotherapy for the treatment of MPM, involving activation of the innate and adaptive tumour microenvironment. The goal is to achieve an intracellular delivery of self-amplifying RNA using intravenous injection of MPM-targeted lipid nanoparticles.

Objective

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a highly aggressive disease, where chemotherapy remains the standard of care, enabling an overall survival (OS) of 12 months. Anti-PD-1-based immunotherapy has not improved the patient's OS, while providing only a response rate of 21%, owing to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment.
The originality of this proposal relies on engineering a novel form of immunotherapy for the treatment of MPM, through activating the innate and adaptive tumor microenvironment, upon one single intravenous injection of self-amplifying RNA, intracellularly delivered by a targeted LipidNanoparticle, which has recently proven to successful target small drugs to orthotopic MPM.
This proposal challenges a major dogma in onconanomedicine targeting nucleic acids to extra-hepatic tumors - where I will have the guidance of Prof. Moreira from CNC, UC, who holds more than 25 years of experience in the field of targeted delivery to solid tumors, being a successful entrepreneur. Supervision will be complemented with the guidance of an immunologist (APaiva), clinical pathologist (ACarmo), expert on physical-chemistry of colloids (BSilva) and drug development (Srgio Simes, supervisor at Bluepharma Pharmaceutical Industry).
This Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Fellowship, in line with Europe Mission on Cancer, is a life time opportunity to gain a number of different transferable skills, mentoring and leadership, networking and knowledge dissemination, exploitation and communication. These will enable me to become a highly qualified researcher, able to generate and integrate differentiated and interdisciplinary knowledge, and with know-how on how to translate it towards the market and the patients. As such, a wide avenue of opportunities will be open to further pursue a career either in Academia as Principal Investigator/Group Leader or Senior Scientist in the R&D department of a company dedicated to cancer immunotherapies and/or complexes injectables.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-02

See all projects funded under this call

Coordinator

UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 215 773,20
Address
PACO DAS ESCOLAS
3004-531 COIMBRA
Portugal

See on map

Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Partners (1)

My booklet 0 0