Innovating Works

TECNEC

Financiado
Preclinical concept validation of tumor endothelial cell metabolism for novel an...
Preclinical concept validation of tumor endothelial cell metabolism for novel anti angiogenic therapy MAIN GOAL: To characterize the metabolic changes, fuelling growth of tumor endothelial cells (TECs) versus normal healthy endothelial cells (NECs), and identify & validate metabolic genes, deregulated in TECs, as targets for anti-... MAIN GOAL: To characterize the metabolic changes, fuelling growth of tumor endothelial cells (TECs) versus normal healthy endothelial cells (NECs), and identify & validate metabolic genes, deregulated in TECs, as targets for anti-angiogenic cancer therapy. BACKGROUND & RATIONALE: Tumors stimulate blood vessel growth (angiogenesis) to nourish cancer cells, but current anti-angiogenic treatments lack sufficient efficacy. NECs are widely used for anti-angiogenesis development, but TECs, the real target cells, have been dismissed, even though they differ fundamentally from NECs. We pioneered NEC metabolism research and demonstrated that inhibition of specific metabolic pathways can block angiogenesis. Nothing is however known on TEC metabolism. I hypothesize that TECs hyper-activate their metabolism in a tissue-specific manner, and that targeting TEC metabolism is a novel concept for inhibiting tumor angiogenesis. METHODOLOGY: We will perform a transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis of TECs & NECs isolated from cancer patients, use an in-house developed bioinformatics platform (BIOMEX) to analyze the omics data in order to rank deregulated metabolic genes, and construct TEC-tailored genome scale metabolic network models (GEMs) allowing in silico computational modeling to predict metabolic targets that affect TEC but not NEC growth. The in vitro angiogenic activity of top targets will be biologically validated directly or after a negative selection shRNA-based screen, followed by validation in preclinical tumor models in vivo, using conditional knockout mice. All procedures are operational. Deliverables include in vivo validated metabolic targets, driving tumor angiogenesis. NOVELTY, OVERALL & CLINICAL IMPACT: These pioneering studies on TEC metabolism promise to open up new horizons/opportunities for cancer research. Treatment with inhibitors of the validated targets promises to normalize hyperactive TEC metabolism as a novel anti-angiogenic cancer therapy. ver más
31/10/2022
3M€
Duración del proyecto: 60 meses Fecha Inicio: 2017-10-03
Fecha Fin: 2022-10-31

Línea de financiación: concedida

El organismo H2020 notifico la concesión del proyecto el día 2022-10-31
Línea de financiación objetivo El proyecto se financió a través de la siguiente ayuda:
ERC-2016-ADG: ERC Advanced Grant
Cerrada hace 8 años
Presupuesto El presupuesto total del proyecto asciende a 3M€
Líder del proyecto
VIB VZW No se ha especificado una descripción o un objeto social para esta compañía.
Perfil tecnológico TRL 4-5