The IIS Aragón Management Team receives the IRB Lleida Management to advance the collaboration between both Institutes.
4 July 2023
An IIS Aragón project to achieve new therapeutic strategies against medulloblastoma, winner of the annual aid from the Cuenca Villoro Foundation
5 July 2023
Thanks to the support of Spanish Association Against Cancer in Aragon, through its line of predoctoral aid, Ismael Perise Badía, researcher at the Aragón Health Research Institute, will carry out his doctoral thesis in the search for new therapeutic strategies based on oncoimmunology for glioblastoma, a brain tumor with no improvements in its treatment for more than 20 years.
The purpose of the AECC Predoctoral Grants is to promote the training of researchers through the completion of a Doctoral Thesis in cancer in a research center and with the support of a research group with an accredited scientific career. Furthermore, these grants require exclusive dedication to completing the Doctoral Thesis.
Microphysiological systems for the development of cellular therapies against brain cancer
El Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain cancer, and one of the types of cancer with the highest mortality rate, mainly due to resistance to treatments, and a great capacity for recurrence after surgery. Furthermore, glioblastoma tumors generate a very unfavorable environment for the cells of the immune system, limiting their action, which is why traditional immunotherapy is not effective against this type of cancer.
El The main objective of this project is to better understand the obstacles that immune system cells encounter when trying to fight glioblastoma, to eliminate these obstacles and enhance the patient's own defenses against the tumor.
For this they will be used advanced cell culture techniques, to simulate the tumor environment and study how it is able to reduce the response of immune cells. Thanks to the use of microfluidic devices (or organ-on-chip), the conditions surrounding these tumors can be reproduced in the laboratory, with the aim of better understanding the mechanisms of inhibition of the immune system and searching for new strategies that increase the effect. of the cells that defend our body.
Will put the focus on memory NK cells, belonging to the immune system, since they have great potential to eliminate tumor cells even in conditions unfavorable for their activity. However, many aspects of their antitumor activity are still unknown, so greater knowledge about their behavior in the tumor environment could open the door to these cells as a new avenue of treatment against this type of lethal tumor.
