| Project Detail |
Improving anti-tumour immune responses
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a class of drugs that block proteins used by cancer cells to evade the immune system, thereby allowing immune cells to better recognise and attack tumours. Although these inhibitors have shown significant promise in treating various cancers, the effect is not durable. With this in mind, the EU-funded ZAP Cancer project proposes to combine ICIs with electrochemotherapy, an approach that uses electric pulses to enhance drug delivery into cancer cells. The rationale is that these approaches will work in synergy to enhance the anti-tumour immune response.
More than a decade has passed since the first immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) was approved for the treatment of advanced melanoma, marking the beginning of immunotherapies in cancer treatment. However, even in the best scenarios with a combination of ICIs and standard therapies, durable benefit is not achieved in about half of patients. Therefore, new approaches are needed on how best to exploit the potential of ICIs. The scientific aim of the ZAP cancer project is to determine how a local ablative technique, electrochemotherapy with BLM, CDDP or OXA induced immunogenic cell death (ICD), can be combined with gene electrotransfer of pDNA encoding ICIs to elicit a systemic anti-tumor immune response. The ZAP cancer project plans to improve access to scientific excellence, optimize research management and accelerate the exchange of personnel, knowledge and ideas in the European Research Area (ERA) and the two participating institutions from the widening countries; the Institute of Oncology Ljubljana (IOLJ) and the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) of University of Ljubljana. ZAP cancer will expand the existing collaborative network with three leading European institutions: Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology, a department of the CNRS (IPBS-CNRS), Toulouse, France, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Leuven, Belgium, The Institute of Translational Pharmacology, Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and a new partner: The Medical University of Graz (MUG), Graz, Austria. Through the proposed project, a multidisciplinary network of cancer research centers will collaborate to establish a state-of-the-art, high-throughput multi-omics in vitro and in vivo research platform at IOLJ and FHS that will provide them with valuable new expertise and knowledge that will enhance their potential for future successful applications at the European and international levels. |
