Descripción del proyecto
Impulsar la inmunoterapia contra el cáncer con nanopartículas tratanósticas
El microentorno tumoral interactúa de manera dinámica con las células cancerosas, lo que favorece su supervivencia, la invasión local y la diseminación metastásica. También ayuda a las células cancerosas a eludir el sistema inmunitario y resistir el tratamiento. Financiado por las Acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, el equipo del proyecto MultiTheranostic intenta abordar el impacto negativo del microentorno tumoral en la inmunoterapia mediante nanopartículas tratanósticas. Estos últimos brindan la oportunidad de combinar la terapia génica, la quimioterapia y la hipertermia magnética para mejorar la focalización y el tratamiento tumorales. Los investigadores probarán nanopartículas biocompatibles en un modelo de ingeniería tisular, para allanar el camino hacia las soluciones avanzadas de nanomedicina contra el melanoma.
Objetivo
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.
Ámbito científico
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineoncologyskin cancermelanoma
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologynanomedicine
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materials
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineimmunologyimmunotherapy
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinador
4715-330 Braga
Portugal