Description du projet
Un vaccin contre le cancer du pancréas
Notre système immunitaire possède la capacité remarquable d’identifier et de tuer les cellules infectées ou anormales, comme les cellules cancéreuses qui expriment des antigènes «étrangers». Il est toutefois bien connu que le cancer est capable de contrer la fonction du système immunitaire à l’aide d’un certain nombre de stratégies. Le projet PAVE, financé par l’UE, se concentre sur l’adénocarcinome canalaire pancréatique (PDAC), l’un des cancers les plus virulents et les plus mortels, et vise à développer des vaccins qui stimuleront ou réactiveront le système immunitaire face à la maladie. Ces vaccins devraient permettre de surmonter les limites que posent le microenvironnement tumoral et le faible nombre de cellules immunitaires infiltrant les tumeurs. En outre, les chercheurs entendent remédier à la découverte récente montrant que le PDAC prend en otage le système immunitaire pour soutenir sa croissance.
Objectif
A Nanovaccine Approach For The Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer By Multicomponent Immuno-Modulation: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in men and women and still fatal in over 90% of patients. It is characterised by its extremely aggressive nature where it is also responsible for the highest mortality rate compared to other major cancers, resulting in excess of 250,000 deaths worldwide per annum. Current state-of-art therapies for advanced PDAC including chemo- and/or radiotherapy, despite extensive efforts, have met with only limited success.
Surgery is only applicable for those with early stages of the disease, or to relieve symptoms, if the cancer is blocking the bile duct or the bowel. There are two major reasons for the resistance of PDAC to conventional therapy. Firstly, PDAC has a very defining hallmark, where an abundance of stromal content is present in the tumour microenvironment (TME) to form a physical and biochemical barrier. Secondly, during progression of the disease, the body's immune system is hijacked to support the proliferation of the cancer. New approaches, such as immunotherapy, are therefore needed where it has already shown promise in overcoming many aspects of this resistance. Immunotherapy has the potential to treat minimal residual disease after pancreatic resection (surgery) as well as for metastatic and non-resectable PDAC. Our objective for this project
is to bring together a multidisciplinary and intersectoral group to develop novel vaccine approaches, including use of multiple immunomodulating components.
Champ scientifique
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MSCA-ITN - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN)Coordinateur
80539 Munchen
Allemagne