A consortium led by the University of Southampton has received funding to develop next-generation treatments for cancer and chronic inflammation.
The consortium, made up of 10 academic research groups, four companies, a hospital and a non-profit organisation, has received £3.8 million from the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme.
The funding will be used to advance cutting-edge treatments for lung cancer, blood cancers, and chronic inflammation using Oligonucleotides (ONs).
ONs are lab-made, short sequences of nucleotides - the building blocks of DNA and RNA. They can be used to send genetic messages to cells and tell them to stop making harmful proteins, shutting off cancers at their source.
Although they are currently only used for a handful of rare diseases, often where traditional drugs have failed, research into ONs is growing fast.
"Oligonucleotides are an exciting area of medicine because they don't just treat the symptoms, they go to the genetic root of the disease," says Dr Eugen Stulz , Associate Professor in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the University of Southampton.
"Although these treatments show promise, they face several challenges because they break down easily in the body, are difficult to deliver, and can cause unwanted side effects. Our new project, called ON-TRACT, aims to fix these issues to create safer, more effective treatments that could help patients in the near future."
The ON-TRACT project will train 14 doctoral researchers across Europe in academic, industrial and clinical settings to equip them for careers in the life sciences sector. The University of Southampton will host three of the researchers.
Over the course of the four-year project, they'll be working on finding ways to deliver ONs to the right cells, make the medicine in a more sustainable way, and test them using tiny lab-grown mini-organs (called organoids) instead of animals.
The consortium includes the University of Southampton, University of Cambridge and Centre for Product Innovation CPI in the UK; the Karolinska Institute, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, the University of Uppsala, Astra Zeneca, Strike Pharma AB, PeptiSystems AB and Region Gävleborg Hospital in Sweden; Centre Nationale de la Recherche CNRS and the University of Aix-Marseille in France; IOC Polish Academy of Sciences and NENCKI Polish Academy of Sciences in Poland; the University of Gent in Belgium; and the University of Udine in Italy.
Southampton is also part of another consortium to have received funding from MSCA Programme called INT2ACT , which will take a similar approach to advancing the use of nucleic acids (NAs), which hold and control genetic information. Scientists can use NAs to diagnose, treat, or even prevent disease.
