Personalising treatments for cancer therapy
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 7.6 million deaths (around 13 % of all deaths). Despite significant efforts invested in finding a cure, deaths from cancer worldwide are projected to continue rising, with an estimated 13.1 million deaths by 2030. The likelihood of a patient's cancer responding to treatment is strongly influenced by alterations in the cancer genome. The main objective of a recently funded innovative European Research Council (ERC) project is to unravel the complex genomic and biochemical characteristics of human cancers and to identify optimal drug combinations for use in personalised cancer therapy. Leading this ambitious project is Professor Anton Berns and Professor Daniel Peeper from the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), alongside Professor David Adams and Professor Michael Stratton from the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI). Together they bring their complementary expertise to form part of the CombatCancer ERC Synergy project with funding of EUR 14.5 million for their six-year study, which started in May this year. The project should allow the identification of drug combinations able to overcome resistance across a range of experimental cancer models. They will focus on four main cancer types, breast, colorectal, melanoma and thoracic cancers (mesothelioma and small-cell lung cancer). The research team's integrated approach will involve the deep genome sequencing of human and mouse tumours, and in vitro drug screens of primary tumor cultures and cancer cell lines, and with computational analysis of the resulting data which will be used to perform drug response predictions. Rigorous validation experiments will be performed in genetically engineered mice and patient-derived xenografts (human tissue grafted onto mice). This integrated effort is expected to yield a number of combination therapies and diagnostic biomarkers that will be further explored in existing clinical trial networks. The project already has a team of seven but another 20 people will be recruited in the lead up to the project's official launch. It is hoped that clinical trials will take place in the last two years of their research.For more information, please visit: Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI) http://www.nki.nl/ Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (WTSI) http://www.sanger.ac.uk/ World Health Organization (WHO) http://www.who.int/topics/cancer/en/index.html
Countries
Netherlands, United Kingdom