In the first year, the large majority of time was spent on project management; we recruited 15 ESR from across the world. These students came from a variety of countries ranging from Mexico to India and were two thirds female. In order to facilitate management of ALKATRAS, we also recruited a project manager who was responsible for organisation and administration tasks, who has been indispensable putting in place a management structure. A training programme was developed consisting of compulsory and optional network-wide elements as well as local training events and secondments. All secondments were conducted, with ESRs attending one secondment in an industrial setting and the other in an academic lab. We also completed all of the compulsory training events with a workshops on epigenetics, genome analysis, communication, autophagy, business and science, ethics in science and a complementary skills workshop. All of the courses received excellent feedback from the students. All of our ESR have also attended multiple local training activities ranging from lab health and safety to specific training in techniques. Dissemination and outreach activities have also been a great success with many of our students having communicated their research activities through poster presentations at multiple conferences as well as via social media, in particular podcasts published on the ALKATRAS and Naked Scientist websites as well as blogs. We also produced a whole issue of the journal 'Cancers' by writing a series of review articles in collaboration with one another to disseminate our research activities to a wider audience. Research articles have also been published by the network with many ESR involved in their production and fostered by collaborations between the labs of the network. All of our ESR have contributed to outreach activities, interacting with a lay audience and the general public including children and adults of all ages and many nationalities.
The 4 scientific work packages (wp) led to the production of interesting and informative research data with the 15 ESR having worked on different aspects ranging from understanding fundamental biological mechanisms of Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase (ALK)-induced lymphomagenesis (wp1) through to mechanisms of disease resistance (wp4). Specifically, within wp1 and 2 both genetic and epigenetic events as a consequence of aberrant ALK activity have been explored. Under wp3, novel therapeutic approaches were explored ranging from tumour vaccination through to combinatorial activities of novel targeted agents. It has been possible to show that children with ALCL develop a CD4+ T cell specific immune response to ALK and the mechanisms of this are under further investigation. We have also developed a commercial assay to detect circulating antibodies to ALK in patient's peripheral blood in collaboration with our partner organisation Cambridge Life Sciences. Additionally, the effects of co-treatment of ALCL with immune checkpoint inhibitors and ALK inhibitors has been investigated with promising results of relevance to the future treatment of patients. Finally, in wp4, the novel ALK inhibitor TPX-0005 has been assessed for its ability to inhibit the growth of ALK-addicted neuroblastoma cell lines and this activity will continue to determine its effects against numerous mutant forms of ALK.
Overall, the ALKATRAS project has fulfilled its aims and goals not only having trained 15 ESR but also producing important research findings with clinical applications and disseminating this research to both professional and lay audiences.
