Descrizione del progetto
Un vaccino contro il cancro al pancreas
Il nostro sistema immunitario ha una notevole capacità di identificare e uccidere le cellule infette o anomale, come le cellule tumorali, che esprimono antigeni «estranei». Il cancro, tuttavia, è noto per contrastare la funzione del sistema immunitario attraverso una serie di strategie. Il progetto PAVE, finanziato dall’UE, si concentra sull’adenocarcinoma duttale pancreatico, uno dei tumori più aggressivi e mortali, e punta a sviluppare vaccini per potenziare o riattivare il sistema immunitario contro la malattia. Tali vaccini dovrebbero superare i limiti posti dal microambiente tumorale e dal basso numero di cellule immunitarie infiltranti il tumore. I ricercatori mirano inoltre ad affrontare la recente scoperta secondo cui l’adenocarcinoma duttale pancreatico dirotta il sistema immunitario per sostenere la sua crescita.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-ITN - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN)Coordinatore
80539 Munchen
Germania