By leveraging Italian and Austrian excellence in genetics, clinics and biotechnology, the p-care cross-border collaboration takes aim at cancer drug resistance and develops innovative strategies for re-sensitizing tumors to therapies and spurring the immune system to fight cancer.
Chips of patients' tumors and their surrounding tissues will be recovered during surgery or biopsy and sent to p-care labs, along with patients’ blood samples.
Collected samples will be subject to different procedures in order to develop complex, 3D cell systems (organoids and spheroids) containing different types of cells. Developed systems will imitate the tumor-of-origin and its tissue microenvironment.
Developed systems will be treated with different drugs used in anti-cancer therapy in order to analyse their response and the contribution of the microenvironment to it. Resistant cells will be identified and characterized by means of various analyses. Data obtained from tumor organoids and spheroids will be used to identify key determinants of drug resistance.
Collections of drugs will be tested on different cell systems in combination with conventional therapies to evaluate drug synergism and effective overcoming of treatment resistance.
Biological material, generated tumor- and tissue-like systems, and data will be collected and stored for reuse in research. They will expand the cross-border biobank initiated with a previous interreg project, PreCanMed.
Training activities and material will be developed in order to make p-care technologies and methods available to biologists, clinical oncologists, bioinformaticians and other professionals in the field of cancer biology and medicine.
p-care partner Giannino Del Sal and his team at the University of Trieste, Italy, have published a research article today in the international journal Cancers (Basel).
138 people in all were connected and followed the event from the crossborder regions involved in the project.
The first p-care workshop on precision cancer medicine will be held online today, starting at 11:00.
is a project funded by the European Union, European Regional Development Fund and Interreg V-A Italia-Austria 2014-2020
Designed by Promoscience
