New therapeutic strategies to tackle glioblastomas: Targeting tumor plasticity and improving immunotherapy efficacy
A collaboration between Paris Brain Institute and Harvard Medical School
Project Lead: Mehdi Touat, M.D., PhD
(Paris Brain Institute)
Project Co-Lead: Keith Ligon, M.D., PhD
(Harvard Medical School)
Duration : 4 years
Budget : $1,9M
Glioblastoma is the most common and most aggressive type of brain tumor. With an incidence of 3 cases per 100,000 people in North America and Europe, it accounts for half of primary malignant brain tumors. Cancer treatment has made tremendous progress over the past decade. However, the prognosis for glioblastoma remains very poor: with the current standard of care, only 10% of patients are expected to survive five years after their diagnosis. It is therefore essential to increase research efforts specific to glioblastoma and to provide new therapeutic approaches.
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Glioblastomas resist most treatments including radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
Recent advances shed new light on the reasons for this resistance:
- Glioblastomas are highly adaptable. The heterogeneity and plasticity of cells helps the tumor adjust quickly to treatments.
- Glioblastomas have a microenvironment that limits the reaction of the immune system and has a strong interplay with the neighboring cells.
Paris Brain Institute and Harvard Medical School are joining forces to fill the gap in knowledge regarding these cell-intrinsic factors and the cell-to-cell interactions that make glioblastomas so resistant to treatment.
The ambition is to identify vulnerabilities in this resistance and develop new treatment strategies for glioblastoma by using the most up-to-date research approaches in cancer and biology.
Led by Mehdi Touat, MD, PhD, from Paris Brain Institute, this groundbreaking project will bring together:
- highly skilled multidisciplinary teams in glioblastoma translational and fundamental research,
- advanced 2D and 3D imaging methods of human samples,
- genomics,
- preclinical modelling,
- and drug development from both institutions.
By combining their expertise, Paris Brain Institute and Harvard Medical School are hoping to accelerate the discovery of novel treatments for glioblastoma patients everywhere.