META-CAN — Targeting the metabolism-immune system connections in Cancer

Results in brief

Targeting the metabolism-immune system connections in Cancer

While extremely diverse in origin, all cancer cells show common features of profound metabolic changes and escape from the immune system. It is now obvious that metabolic adaptations are not limited to glucose metabolism (Warburg effect) but are more general and affect several metabolic pathways in cancer cells but also in surrounding, non-malignant immune cells. Understanding how metabolism can affect tumor cells and the anti-cancer immune response therefore represents a potential therapeutic intervention point that can be exploited for a wide range of tumors. However, the development of such therapies is hampered by the complexity of cellular metabolism and the immune system, plus a shortage of scientists with interdisciplinary training that can navigate with ease between academic, industrial, and clinical sectors. Our network has provided a pan-European interdisciplinary and intersectoral training programme of excellence, bringing young researchers together with world-leading academics, clinicians, and industry personnel. The consortium integrates a coherent set of hypothesis-driven research projects that are aimed at focusing on ONE question: how metabolism is associated with modulation of cell death susceptibility and the immune response in the context of cancer. Much effort has been devoted to understanding how modulating cell metabolism may interfere with tumor growth. While the basic pathways have been worked out, we now need to better understand them in terms of their interactions between cancer and immune cells. This lack of knowledge hinders efforts to exploit inhibition of cancer metabolism for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes. META-CAN has improved (and surely will in the future) the understanding of these metabolic pathways in cancers in their dialogue with immune cells and has made great advances in the pre-clinical validation of new targets and metabolic drugs. This will serve as a platform for drug discovery and diagnostics efforts that aim to therapeutically target metabolism, inflammation, or immune responses for the treatment of a variety of cancers. Specifically, this program had the following research objectives: 1.- Uncover the effect of inhibition of metabolism on tumor cells. 2.- Delineate the effects of nutrient-poor and hypoxic microenvironment on the crosstalk of tumor-associated innate immune cells. 3.- Reveal the impact of nutrient microenvironment on tumor cells and lymphocytes. 4.- Develop anti-metabolic drug and diagnostic markers.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Cancer cells show common features of profound metabolic changes and escape from the immune system, independently of their tissue of origin. These metabolic adaptations are not limited to glucose metabolism (the ""Warburg effect"") but are more general and affect several metabolic pathways in cancer cells as well as in the stroma, including immune cells. This network will explore how nutrients and hypoxia regulate the tumor-immune system interplay, and how this communication is controlled by oncogenes, metabolic regulators and current or potential drugs targeting metabolism. Understanding how metabolism can affect tumor cells and the anti-cancer immune response represents a potential therapeutic intervention point that can be exploited to develop novel therapies and new diagnostic and prognostic markers. The development of therapies targeting cancer metabolism is hampered by: 1) the complexity of the regulation that metabolism exerts on many different tumor layers, which requires multidisciplinary collaborations, and 2) the shortage of scientists that can navigate with ease between academic, industrial and clinical sectors and have the scientific and complementary skills to convert research findings into commercial and clinical applications. This network provides a pan-European interdisciplinary and intersectoral training program of excellence bringing young researchers together with World leading academics, clinicians, pharma industry members, corporate research and dissemination and outreach specialists. As part of the research training, the consortium will conduct a coherent and integrated set of hypothesis-driven research projects that are aimed at discovering, describing and exploiting how metabolism at the cell and the whole body levels is integrated with modulation of cell death susceptibility and the immune response in the context of cancer.""

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

FUNDACIO INSTITUT D'INVESTIGACIO BIOMEDICA DE BELLVITGE · L'Hospitalet De LlobregatCoordinatorSpain
ACADEMISCH MEDISCH CENTRUM BIJ DE UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM · AmsterdamNetherlands
AMSTERDAM UMC RESEARCH BV · AmsterdamNetherlands
APPLIED RESEARCH USING OMIC SCIENCES SL · BarcelonaSpain
ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE HOPITAUX DE PARIS · ParisFrance
BIOcomuniCAT · BarcelonaSpain
BOEHRINGER INGELHEIM RCV GMBH & CO KG · WienAustria
Canceropole PACA · MarseilleFrance
EVOTEC (FRANCE) SAS · TOULOUSE CEDEXFrance
FUNDACION ESADE · BarcelonaSpain
HOSPITAL SANT JOAN DE DEU · Esplugues De LlobregatSpain
IBM ISRAEL - SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LTD · Petach TikvaIsrael
INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA SANTE ET DE LA RECHERCHE MEDICALE · ParisFrance
MEDIZINISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN · WienAustria
Seahorse Bio (Agilent Technologies) · North BillericaUnited States
TECHNION - ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · HaifaIsrael
TECHNION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FOUNDATION LTD · HaifaIsrael
The FEBS Journal (FEBS) · CambridgeUnited Kingdom
UNIVERSITE PARIS CITE · ParisFrance
VIB VZW · ZWIJNAARDE - GENTBelgium

META-CAN · Targeting the metabolism-immune system connections in Cancer

Results in brief

Targeting the metabolism-immune system connections in Cancer

Project objective

Participants

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