Bioinformatics to find the weak point of neuroblastoma and other childhood cancers

A new group from the IIS Aragón (Cancer Heterogeneity and Immunomics) will study the mutations of more than 1.000 tumors and their relationship with better survival

At the helm is the Teruel scientist Rebeca Sanz, who will receive €60.000 in aid from Aspanoa to fight one of the most common pediatric tumors.

Un new group from the Aragón Health Research Institute (IIS Aragón), Cancer Heterogeneity and Immunomics, just started a project to locate the weak points of the most common solid tumors in children with cancer. It is led by the Teruel scientist (born in Urrea de Gaén) Rebeca Sanz and is launched thanks to a grant of €60.000 from Aspanoa, the Aragonese association against childhood cancer.

These researchers are going to study the neoantigens that generate tumors, which are protein fragments that have mutated in cancer cells. The immune system recognizes some of these cells as foreign and therefore tries to destroy them. “We want to take advantage of neoantigens as a strategy to generate therapies against cancer, since our own body recognizes them. There are many groups in the world that are already trying to do it with solid tumors in adults, and we are going to try it in pediatric cancers,” says Dr. Sanz.

From this new group of the IIS Aragón We will study what type of neoantigens generate these childhood cancers and if the immune system finds them and eliminates them. To do this, they have collected public information from more than 1.000 neuroblastomas, one of the most common pediatric tumors. Using bioinformatics, they want to see which mutations are repeated and correlate them with survival, sex or age.

“Neoantigens are usually unique for each patient and in that case personalized vaccines would have to be developed for each child, which would be very expensive. But if we found one that was repeated it would be an important discovery. We would validate it directly in tumor samples and it would open the door to a therapy in the future,” explains Rebeca Sanz.

This project has a second objective, which is to increase the knowledge of pediatric solid tumors using a very novel technique called spatial transcriptomics. “In this way, we will be able to characterize childhood tumors in great detail,” says Rebeca Sanz, who adds that they will be able to study 20.000 genes at different points of the tumor. “This will allow us to have very detailed information on the microenvironment of these tumors, which will surely lead to new hypotheses and lines of work,” she says.

Specifically, They are going to study in depth especially neuroblastoma, due to its higher incidence and because it represents 15% of current mortality from childhood cancer; but also others such as Wilms tumor, a cancer that appears in the kidneys, or childhood sarcomas. The samples will be provided by the Miguel Servet Children's Hospital in Zaragoza.. In fact, two doctors from the Oncopediatrics Unit are involved in the project: Yurena Aguilar and Alba Fernández. The TMELab of the Engineering Research Institute of Aragon (I3A) and other groups of the IIS Aragón also collaborate in this research.

“This help from Aspanoa means a lot to us. We had the bioinformatics techniques ready, but we needed this push to start analyzing samples from patients from our hospital. Now this line is very strengthened because it will also allow us to hire a postdoctoral researcher,” adds this IIS Aragón researcher.

Image: Asier Alkorta