Descrizione del progetto
La biopsia e la chirurgia inducono metastasi del cancro?
La diagnosi e il trattamento di un cancro spesso comportano la biopsia e/o la rimozione chirurgica del tumore primario che provocano lesioni ai tessuti. Le metastasi, la principale causa di morti correlate al cancro, spesso hanno inizio a partire da singole cellule rilasciate dal tumore primario attraverso il flusso sanguigno. Questo progetto finanziato dall’UE esaminerà se le lesioni tissutali iniziali contribuiscono in modo significativo alla diffusione trasmessa dal sangue delle cellule tumorali portando alla formazione di metastasi. La ricerca si focalizzerà sul carcinoma mammario e sul carcinoma prostatico. Essa studierà l’impatto del rilascio delle cellule tumorali circolanti dopo la biopsia o l’intervento chirurgico e applicherà nuove tecnologie per catturare le cellule circolanti per la loro analisi funzionale. I ricercatori valuteranno inoltre eventuali strategie terapeutiche per prevenire la diffusione di cellule tumorali vitali in siti distanti.
Obiettivo
Background: Blood-borne metastasis of malignant cells from the primary lesion to distant organs is the major cause of cancer-related death. Most cancer patients face tissue injury at initial diagnosis when tumor tissue is obtained by biopsies to secure the diagnosis of cancer and at primary surgery required to remove the primary tumor.
Objectives: We will evaluate whether tissue injury contributes to a significant blood-borne dissemination of viable tumor cells, which is one of the most under-investigated areas in cancer research. We will focus on the two most frequent malignancies in women (breast cancer) and men (prostate cancer) that occur in the in European Union with incidence rates of 139.5 and 139.0 cases per 100,000, respectively. The current project will study the extent of the release of tumor cells into the blood circulation after needle tissue biopsies and primary surgery, the characteristics of the released tumor cells and the contribution of this release to cancer progression. Moreover, we will assess therapeutic strategies to block extravasation of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) to distant sites. As experimental approach, we will apply novel technologies for capturing CTCs and for determining their molecular characteristics in cancer patients as well as experimental models that are able to determine the functional properties of CTCs.
Impact: The results will have an important impact on medical practice. If biopsies would contribute to tumor progression, it might be a strong driving force for the development of better imaging modalities or “liquid biopsy” assays of peripheral blood that can diagnose cancer through the detection of CTCs or tumor cell products such as circulating nucleic acids (DNA, microRNA), exosomes or tumor-educated platelets. Moreover, short-term pharmacologic inhibition of extravasation might be able to prevent the extravasation of injury-released CTCs and reduce the risk of metastasis.
Campo scientifico
CORDIS classifica i progetti con EuroSciVoc, una tassonomia multilingue dei campi scientifici, attraverso un processo semi-automatico basato su tecniche NLP.
CORDIS classifica i progetti con EuroSciVoc, una tassonomia multilingue dei campi scientifici, attraverso un processo semi-automatico basato su tecniche NLP.
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantIstituzione ospitante
20251 Hamburg
Germania