Project description
Tumour evasion mechanisms unveiled
Research over the years has characterised the immune surveillance mechanisms against cancer that involve both T and B cells. However, tumour cells can still evade immune detection clearly indicating that not all T cell-tumour interactions lead to an immune response. Funded by the European Research Council, the TouchCancer project will focus on these non-activating events and investigate the individual interactions between physically touching immune and tumour cell types in biopsies. Using a novel in situ sequencing techniques, researchers will unveil gene expression and molecular changes implicated in immune-tumour crosstalk. Project findings will improve our understanding of tumour immune evasion, paving the way towards novel immune activation strategies.
Objective
Despite the constant surveillance of immune cells, tumour cells can still evade the immune response. Unravelling the interactions of T cells and B cells with tumour cells can shed light on tumour evasion. Extensive research is focused on the mechanisms of activation of an immune response in T cells. However, it is known that detection events, i.e. physical contact between individual surveying T cells and tumour cells, don’t necessarily lead to such activation. Little is known about physical interactions between T cells and tumour cells that do not end in activation. Here I suggest focusing on these detection-without activation events. In these cases, how is the detection information encoded in T cells? i.e. How are T cells and other immune cells affected by the interaction with tumour cells on the molecular level?. My working assumption is that the evading mechanism can be manifested as a physical change in immune cells upon touching tumour cells, and I suggest detecting the ‘smoking gun’ of this process in biopsies, in the form of changes in the gene expression program of touching immune cells. This was not done before because it is almost impossible to study single interacting cells in tumour tissues. It requires both high spatial resolution, to detect individually interacting cells, and high molecular resolution, to quantify cell types and states. Here, using a technology I developed for in situ sequencing with super-resolution, I will generate the first dataset of super-resolved spatial genomics mapping of human biopsies and detect tens of thousands of individual interactions between physically touching immune and tumour cell types. I will then build a new imaging technology to sequence T cell and B cell receptor in situ and detect tumour-specific ones, and will build a computational framework to detect genes and pathways involved in the immune-tumour crosstalk. This will reveal mechanistic insights into tumour evasion and suggest directions for its reversion.
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.
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.
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics
- natural sciences physical sciences optics microscopy super resolution microscopy
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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52900 Ramat Gan
Israel
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