Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the Melomanes project aims to train researchers in the development of a combined therapy approach using magnetic nanoparticles to induce magnetic and optic hyperthermia damage in the tumour microenvironment, facilitating infiltration by CAR-T cells.

Project description

Metastatic melanoma is a hard-to-treat disease and it remains as one of the most worrisome cancer. There is an urgent need to improve the current therapies (chemotherapy, radiotherapy) that have a limited efficacy. A single therapy is not efficient enough to tackle metastatic melanoma and a combination of therapies is thus emerging as a necessity to efficiently eradicate all cancer cells.

Recently, the development of immunotherapies has shown promises, in particular chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells. Nevertheless, the physical barriers represented by cellular and non-cellular components of the tumor microenvironment combined to the abnormal tumor vasculature and high interstitial fluid pressure, hamper an efficient tumour infiltration of CAR-T cells. In this context, thanks to a network of 18 partners (including 10 non-academic partners), MELOMANES aims to train doctoral researchers for the development of a combined therapy exploiting the properties of magnetic nanoparticles to induce damage on the tumor microenvironment by magnetic and optic hyperthermia in order to facilitate the infiltration of CAR-T cells.

This therapeutic approach combining hyperthermia and immunotherapy is versatile, as it could be also applied to other types of solid tumors. Research and transferable training of the doctoral researchers will be performed in a highly interdisciplinary, intersectoral, and international environment.

In addition to acquiring skills related to the research project, they will be trained also in open science, communication and dissemination, responsible research and innovation, circular economy, ethics, data management, entrepreneurship, marketing, intellectual property, and gender dimension in research. Their competences will be validated through certification and qualification examination, allowing a new generation of highly skilled doctoral researchers to emerge with a high-level training in particular in the multidisciplinary field of nanomedicine.

Belgian partners

Pepric NV