Targeting the roots of cancer metastasis and therapy resistance

针对癌症转移和治疗耐药的根源

• 批准号: 511711508
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Thomas Brabletz
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Experimentelle Medizin I - Molekulare Pathogeneseforschung
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Reinhart Koselleck Projects
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/511711508?language=en
• 关键词: Targeting; roots; cancer; metastasis; therapy

Despite great progress in the last two decades, cancer is still an often deadly disease. Even today only about 30% of cancer patients, who received modern treatment regimens including targeted drugs and immunotherapy respond with long-term remission. The most fatal steps in cancer are metastasis, which is responsible for >90% of cancer-associated death, and therapy resistance. These facts demonstrate the high pressure to develop novel therapeutic strategies. My research over the last 20 years contributed to conceptual advance and the identification of novel molecular links in tumor progression towards metastasis and therapy resistance. The work of my and other groups demonstrated that a fraction of cancer cells within a heterogenous tumor is responsible for metastasis, therapy resistance and disease relapse. These cancer cells are highly plastic and transiently activate the embryonic embryonic EMT (epithelial-mesenchymal transition)-program. The goal of the proposed project is to molecularly characterize this until now “untargetable” fraction of highly plastic cancer cells, thereby supporting the development of novel therapeutic strategies against therapy resistance and metastasis.

尽管过去二十年取得了巨大进展，但癌症仍然是一种致命的疾病，即使在今天，接受现代治疗方案（包括靶向药物和免疫疗法）的癌症患者中也只有约 30% 能够获得长期缓解。转移是导致 90% 以上的癌症相关死亡的原因，这些事实证明了开发新治疗策略的巨大压力，我在过去 20 年的研究促进了概念的进步和新分子联系的识别。肿瘤进展至转移我和其他团队的工作表明，异质性肿瘤内的一小部分癌细胞是转移、治疗耐药和疾病复发的原因。这些癌细胞具有高度可塑性，并能短暂激活胚胎 EMT（上皮-间质）。该项目的目标是对迄今为止“不可靶向”的高度可塑性癌细胞进行分子表征，从而支持针对治疗耐药和转移的新型治疗策略的开发。