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IMmune MOdulating strategies for treatment of MErkel cell Carcinoma

Objective

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a highly aggressive, often lethal neuroendocrine cancer of the skin associated with the recently discovered, common Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV). With an incidence of 0.44 per 100,000 MCC is a very rare cancer. Notably, however, although MCC is 40 times less common than malignant melanoma, MCC has a dramatically higher mortality rate than melanoma rendering MCC to the most lethal skin cancer (37 versus 15 percent). This high mortality rate is largely due to the fact that to date none of the currently available therapeutic interventions is able to improve overall survival of patients suffering from metastatic disease. Consequently, new therapeutic strategies are needed for metastatic MCC. Since several lines of evidence indicate the outstanding immunogenicity of MCC, immune modulating treatment strategies are particularly attractive. IMMOMEC is a 5-year project to establish and investigate an innovative and effective immunotherapy for MCC, thus directly responding to the aims of the topic HEALTH-2011.2.4.1-1 Investigator-driven treatment trials for rare cancers.
IMMOMEC will develop a rational immune therapeutic approach for treatment of patients with MCC that is based on the targeted delivery of interleukin-2 to the tumor microenvironment. However, IMMOMEC will not only provide a new therapeutic option for MCC patients, but will also establish the relevance of immune modulating strategies to treat solid cancers in general, establish and validate new tools to monitor patients receiving such therapies as well as compile prognostic and predictive biomarkers to individualize immune modulating therapies. Moreover, IMMOMEC will introduce a new immune modulating therapeutic produced by a European SME, which also holds the intellectual property rights.

Objectives of IMMOMEC:
I. Establish an effective therapy for Merkel cell carcinoma evaluated in a multicentre randomized clinical phase II trial
II. Establish the feasibility of effective immunotherapy for solid cancers
III. Identification and characterization of HLA-restricted immunodominant T cell epitopes specific for MCC to monitor the immune modulating effect and to develop specific therapeutics
IV. Identification of prognostic and predictive biomarkers, i.e. search for markers foretelling the course of disease or treatment response in MCC, respectively
V. Establish a European network for research and therapy of MCC

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP7-HEALTH-2011-two-stage
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research project

Coordinator

MEDIZINISCHE UNIVERSITAT GRAZ
Address
Neue stiftingtalstrasse 6
8010 Graz
Austria

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Region
Südösterreich Steiermark Graz
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Administrative Contact
Juergen Becker (Prof.)
Links
EU contribution
No data

Participants (10)

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Last update: 27 January 2022

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/277775

European Union, 2023