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Exploring cell-to-cell heterogeneity and exploiting epigenetic regulation for the interception of myeloid disease cells.

Project description

Advancing cell-based interceptive medicine for blood cancers

Disease interception is a novel concept and refers to treating a disease before it fully manifests. However, the identification and specific targeting of diseased cells amongst a population of healthy cells without side effects remains a challenge. The EU-funded INTERCEPT-MDS project will establish a multidisciplinary training programme to offer early-stage researchers the necessary expertise in the field. From a scientific perspective, the project will focus on myeloid blood cancers and use single-cell state-of-the-art methodologies to develop novel research tools that can help identify clonally distinct cells. For targeting disease cells, the network will leverage European expertise in epigenetics and chromatin regulation. The project is expected to put the concept of disease interception to the test with the hope of improving clinical outcome for patients.

Objective

Disease interception is a novel concept referring to treatment of a disease before the disease fully develops by removing altered cells. To make disease cell interception a reality we will need to overcome two key challenges. First, we will need to be able to identify few altered disease cells among many healthy ones. Second, we need to develop strategies that allow to specifically target disease cells but do not affect healthy cells. In the INTERCEPT-MDS ITN we propose to approach these challenges through research and the shared multidisciplinary and multisectorial training of 12 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs). As a result we will build and present some of Europe’s first experts in the novel field of disease cell interception. We will take advantage of single-cell omics methods that have reached a level of maturity to be applied on a broad-scale. For interception, we will explore and exploit the epigenetic regulatory space and use our privileged access to tool compounds and our capacity to perform genetic screenings in vivo and in vitro. We will focus on myeloid diseases because they are a suitable paradigm for clonally evolving diseases and come with a major advantage. In contrast to most other diseases is the availability of stem cells, niche cells and their progeny through samples of the clinical routine. Finally, we will address technical challenges by developing novel research tools.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

MSCA-ITN - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (ITN)

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-ITN-2020

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Coordinator

FUNDACIO INSTITUT DE RECERCA CONTRA LA LEUCEMIA JOSEP CARRERAS
Net EU contribution
€ 752 714,64
Address
CARRETERA DE CAN RUTI CAMI DE LES ESCOLES S/N
08916 Badalona
Spain
Region
Este Cataluña Barcelona
Activity type
Research Organisations
Links
Total cost
€ 752 714,64

Participants (9)