Projektbeschreibung
Verstärkung der Krebsimmuntherapie mit theranostischen Nanopartikeln
Die Mikroumgebung des Tumors steht in dynamischer Wechselwirkung mit den Krebszellen und unterstützt deren Überleben, lokale Invasion und metastatische Ausbreitung. Außerdem hilft sie Krebszellen, sich dem Immunsystem zu entziehen und einer Therapie zu widersetzen. Das über die Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Maßnahmen finanzierte Projekt MultiTheranostic zielt darauf ab, die negativen Auswirkungen der Mikroumgebung des Tumors auf die Immuntherapie durch theranostische Nanopartikel zu bekämpfen. Letztere bieten die Möglichkeit, Gentherapie, Chemotherapie und magnetische Hyperthermie zu kombinieren, um das Tumor-Targeting und die Behandlung zu verbessern. Die Forschenden werden biokompatible Nanopartikel in einem biotechnologisch bearbeiteten Gewebemodell testen und damit den Weg für fortschrittliche nanomedizinische Lösungen zur Bekämpfung des Melanoms ebnen.
Ziel
Cancer is a leading cause of death and a major impediment to increasing life expectancy around the globe. Amongst all skin cancers, melanoma is a hard-to-treat disease, owing to its high potential for metastasis, and it remains as one of the most aggressive cancers. Single therapy is not efficient to tackle metastatic melanoma and a combination of therapies is thus emerging as a necessity to efficiently eradicate all cancer cells. Recently, immunotherapy, in particular immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), has become a powerful treatment strategy for cancer. Nevertheless, the physical barriers represented by cellular and non-cellular components of the tumour microenvironment combined with immune escape mechanisms of cancer, hamper an efficient tumour infiltration and patients’ responsiveness to ICI therapy. In this context, MultiTheranostic aims to develop theranostic nanoparticles for gene therapy-mediated immune checkpoint silencing and chemotherapy, exploiting the properties of magnetic nanoparticles to induce damage locally on the tumour microenvironment by magnetic hyperthermia (MH). This multimodal theranostic approach, incorporating MRI tracking, is versatile, as it could be also applied to other types of solid tumours. MultiTheranostic objectives are (i) to synthetize and validate a biocompatible magnetic lipid nanoparticle (NPs) incorporating silencing RNA against ICI targets, and chemotherapy (WP1, WP2), (ii) to develop a tissue-engineered (TE) model for screening and monitoring the efficacy of the NPs (WP3), and (ii) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the final drug delivery system as a multimodal theranostic approach for metastatic melanoma (WP4). With MultiTheranostic the researcher will greatly expand her scientific expertise in the fields of nanotechnology and bioengineering, positioning her as a leading independent researcher, contributing to the advancement of nanomedicine in Europe and beyond.
Wissenschaftliches Gebiet
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologyskin cancermelanoma
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologynanomedicine
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materials
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineimmunologyimmunotherapy
Schlüsselbegriffe
Programm/Programme
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Aufforderung zur Vorschlagseinreichung
Andere Projekte für diesen Aufruf anzeigenFinanzierungsplan
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsKoordinator
4715-330 Braga
Portugal