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H2020Staff exchange2018–2023

CANCER · Personalised Postoperative Immunotherapy To Improving Cancer Outcome and improving quality of life

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2018-03-01 → 2023-08-31
EU contribution
€2,430,000
Participants
19
Scheme
MSCA-RISE

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners. CORDIS does not always give exact coordinates for projects before 2014. These points are placed at city or country level.

Results in brief

Personalised Postoperative Immunotherapy To Improving Cancer Outcome and improving quality of life

For several decades, the treatment of cancer has followed the paradigm that the patient has one or a combination of the following: surgery, radiotherapy, antibody targeted and/or chemotherapy. The project, CANCER is now addressing a new area of cancer therapeutics that has recently taken centre-stage for its novel approach with promising early clinical trial results. Cancer immunotherapy has traditionally failed to use the body’s immune system to target cancer. However, a new pathway has been set in the last ten years to face this lasting problem of how to reverse tolerance, rejuvenate the immune system and restore immune homeostasis. Tumours are very heterogeneous and develop clinical resistance to monotherapies. Results from preclinical studies have shown that efficient anti-tumour strategies must focus on hitting different targets concurrently including the presence of immunogenic cancer-cell death to boosting antigen presentation and inducing activation and survival of immune-effector cells. We expect that a large part of patients with 'immune resistant' tumours, who are predicted to have a poor prognosis regardless of any current intervention, will benefit from the development of novel therapies. The importance of our project is that it is addressing the impact of novel and accelerated immunotherapy drug development/approval models. Important unanswered questions for cancer immunotherapy are now emerging and are being investigated by the community and in particular, the evaluation of the traditional cancer drug development model versus the testing of new cancer immunotherapies. Our overall objective covers the following four points: a) to understand the concept of combination of immunotherapy and how it impacts upon cancer treatment; b) to optimise the biomaterial platform to encapsulate a small library of defined immune reagents for more accurate and timely delivery of the combination payload to its intended target; c) to optimise the cancer management process by improved treatment options for cancer patients and providing evidence of positive socio-economic outcomes leading to wider patient access to immunotherapy and d) to explore how to extend the survival rate together with QOL after oncology therapy with respect to healthy eating and adequate exercise in the form of palliative care.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

During this RISE project we aim to develop nanoparticle-based encapsulated libraries of different immunotherapeuticbiomolecules for treatment after surgery as part of a novel cancer management strategy. The current state-of-art for themanagement of cancer starts with surgery, after identification of an accessible tumour mass. Surgery remains an effectivetreatment option for many types of cancer today and it is considered curative treatment for most solid tumours. It forms partof a multidisciplinary approach used in conjunction with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. These approaches, however, haveseveral limitations, including inability of surgical resection to affect distal metastatic disease, toxicity to healthy tissues withchemotherapy and lack of effectiveness of radiation therapy in more aggressive tumours. The observation that cancer canrelapse months or years after initial surgery implies that micrometastases still resides within the body in a latent state. Ourproposal is to take cancer therapy to beyond state-of-art by implementing techniques which will take us into new directions.This includes a) new methods to identify immune gene profiles and biomarkers b) transgenic mouse models where thecomplex interactions that underlie immune function can be visualised as multiplexed events in real time and c) the use ofnanoparticle-based libraries of immune modulating reagent combinations. There are three key objectives within this project:i) to use immune gene signatures to monitor disease progression and therapeutic efficacy of immunotherapy combinationson nanoparticle-based platforms, ii) to optimise the platform to encapsulate libraries of immune components for morepersonalised, accurate and timely delivery of the payload to its intended target and iii) to optimise the overall cancermanagement process of image-guided surgery followed by postoperative immunotherapy so that we can ultimately provide alifetime of protection against cancer.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • PERCUROS BV · 's-Gravenhage (Den Haag)CoordinatorNetherlands
  • ACADEMISCH ZIEKENHUIS LEIDEN · LeidenNetherlands
  • ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE CASTELLI ROMANI GREEN TOUR · AricciaItaly
  • ASSOCIAZIONE HAND IN HAND · NemiItaly
  • AUGEAS ASSOCIAZIONE DI SPORT PROMOZIONE E TURISMO · GENZANO DI ROMAItaly
  • BOSCHIVA MELCHIORRI SRL · Rocca Di PapaItaly
  • ERASMUS UNIVERSITAIR MEDISCH CENTRUM ROTTERDAM · RotterdamNetherlands
  • HELRIK AND LOUW AND PARTNERS COMPANY LTD · LondonUnited Kingdom
  • HELRIK AND LOUW COMPANY LTD · LondonCity levelUnited Kingdom
  • JENACELL GMBH · JENAGermany
  • MEDRES-MEDICAL RESEARCH GMBH · KolnGermany
  • PROGREDUM GMBH · KaiserslauternGermany
  • TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT · DelftNetherlands
  • TECOBIOSCIENCES GMBH · LANDSHUTGermany
  • THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD · SHEFFIELDUnited Kingdom
  • UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI CAMERINO · CamerinoItaly
  • UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT · MaastrichtNetherlands
  • UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM · AmsterdamNetherlands
  • UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLONSKI · KrakowPoland

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union