As the “guardian of the genome”, the p53 protein helps control cell growth and repair DNA. However, the protein is mutated in over 50% of all cancers. When a p53 mutation occurs, its ability to control cell growth and repair DNA is impaired, allowing cancer cells to grow unchecked. These mutations are also problematic, as they are associated with increased tumor aggressiveness and resistance to conventional cancer treatments. Tailoring cancer treatment based on p53 mutation status is therefore of great interest, as it has the potential to improve treatment responses and outcomes for patients.
Drugs that specifically target and restore the normal function of p53, or counteract the effects of a p53 mutation, are a new type of therapy that can be used to treat cancer based on p53 mutation status. While these p53-targeted treatments hold great promise for personalised treatment based on p53 mutation status, their use is complicated by the fact that p53 mutations can have diverse functional effects on cancer therapy. There is a need to assess the functional impact of p53 mutation status, but this has been challenging due to the lack of surrogate markers linking mutation status to functional outcomes.
Given that p53 can regulate blood vessel growth and that vessel imaging is used clinically to monitor functional response to therapy, we hypothesized that blood vessel features could be a marker that would assess the functional impact of p53 mutation status. This MSCA project therefore aimed to evaluate the links between p53 mutations and various blood vessel features using advanced vessel imaging techniques and p53 response detection methods (Figure 1).
