Project description
Tracing immune responses against early cancer mutations
Cancer emerges through the accumulation of mutations in DNA of somatic cells. However, emerging evidence indicates that such mutations are also common in healthy tissues. Considering that T cells are capable of recognising such mutations, it is unclear why some, and not others, lead to tumour development. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the T-REaCT project aims to unravel how T cell responses emerge during early tumour evolution. Researchers will use cutting-edge single-cell genomics to map immune responses in human colon samples from healthy and cancerous tissue. Project findings have the potential to improve early cancer detection and pave the way for new immunotherapies that target pre-malignant lesions.
Objective
Cancers are characterized by the accumulation of somatic mutations in the DNA. The human immune system can detect such mutations in cancers via T cells, which forms an important factor in the activity of clinically used cancer immunotherapies. What challenges our classic view of cancer formation are the recent breakthrough discoveries showing that somatic mutations are ubiquitously found in healthy tissues - why only some of these mutations lead to clonal outgrowths and what are the factors sustaining them? As T cells recognizing somatic mutations are abundant in cancer, it is plausible to speculate these interactions could start early in tumor evolution. Albeit of high interest, studying this phenomenon has been technically challenging as it requires the ability to obtain mutational data at single-cell resolution and interrogating T cell specificities.
The T-REaCT action aims to experimentally map the co-evolution of T cells and cells carrying somatic mutations across tumor evolution. By combining two novel sets of tools and expertise from two competitive fields of synthetic T cell reactivity screening (mentor Dr Schumacher, Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Netherlands) with single-cell genomics (co-mentor Dr Landau, Weill Cornell Medicine and New York Genome Center, the US), we will create a roadmap of immune responses in human colon samples ranging from healthy tissue to adenomas to overt cancer.
By describing the formation of T cell reactivity against somatic mutations from pre-malignant to the earliest steps of malignant seeding, our project has the potential to revolutionize early cancer detection and the eradication of (pre-)malignant lesions through personalized immunotherapies.
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 evolutionary biology
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics mutation
- medical and health sciences clinical medicine oncology
- medical and health sciences basic medicine immunology immunotherapy
- natural sciences biological sciences genetics genomes
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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)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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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
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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
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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1066 CX Amsterdam
Netherlands
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