Survival of the fittest: Can we help healthy cells win the race against cancer?
Co-funded with:
KWF Dutch Cancer Society
Cancer types:
Bowel cancer
Project period:
–
Research institute:
Utrecht University
Award amount:
£222,750
Location:
Netherlands
Many cancer treatments work by targeting and weakening cancer cells. But what if we flip this idea and develop a treatment that actually works by strengthening healthy cells? This is exactly what Dr Saskia Suijkerbuijk, Dr Kelly Stecker and their teams hope to do. Their idea could lead to a kinder, more effective treatment for bowel cancer.
Why is this research needed?
Cancer treatments like chemotherapy can be very effective at killing and clearing cancer cells. But they can also damage healthy cells. This sometimes leads to difficult side-effects like hair loss or digestive issues. Unfortunately some of these side-effects can really affect patients’ quality of life. Developing cancer treatments that are kinder and have fewer side-effects is a major goal for researchers.
This is why Dr Saskia Suijkerbuijk, Dr. Kelly Stecker and their teams are investigating cancer treatment from a completely different angle. They hope to find a way to support healthy cell growth in the bowel, and prevent their loss against cancer cells. By shifting the focus to building up healthy cells like this, the team aim to find new ways to stop cancer cells while sparing healthy cells – ultimately leading to kinder cures for patients.
A big thank you to all supporters of Worldwide Cancer Research! Discovery research like ours often struggles to find funding, so your belief in discovery science genuinely makes new ideas possible. We are very grateful for this.
What is the science behind this project?
Healthy cells in our body are continuously competing against each other. Any cells which are damaged or become less healthy are removed, and replaced by more ‘fit’ surrounding cells. This can be a very effective quality-control system for us. It helps to make sure our organs and tissues remain as healthy as possible, and it also works to weed out any potentially cancerous cells.
But cancer cells can also sometimes manage to hijack this system. They can use it outcompete healthy cells and make sure that surrounding cells and molecules support and encourage the tumour to grow instead. We don’t fully know how they do this, but Dr Suijkerbuijk and Dr. Stecker and their teams believe that communication between cancer cells and their healthy neighbours plays a crucial role..
To find out if this is true, they need to ‘listen in’ on exactly how these cells communicate. So for this project, the team will recreate a tiny version of a bowel in the lab, called an ‘organoid’.
They will then use special tools to label molecules and proteins from different cells as they interact with each other- catching conversations between cells as they happen in real time. By capturing these cellular conversations, they hope to identify new targets for treatments that strengthen healthy cells and prevent tumours from gaining the upper hand.
What difference could this project make to patients in the future?
Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, and we need new cures for patients that can help them live well, for longer. By analysing how bowel cancer cells and surrounding healthy cells talk to each other, the team hopes to develop new treatment approaches that tip the balance in favour of healthy tissue.
Excitingly this approach is already in early trials for a different type of cancer at a much earlier stage, and Dr Suijkerbuijk and Dr. Stecker’s work could lead to the first use of this approach in more advanced tumours – bringing new hope for patients with more progressed disease.
Active Switzerland
Bowel cancer
Immunotherapy for cancer has huge potential but doesn’t always work, so this project hopes to find ways for it to cure more people with bowel cancer.
Researcher: Professor Alessandro Sartori
Developing bowel cancer immunotherapies that target DNA repair
Complete Greece
Bowel cancer
This project hopes to reveal vital new ways to stop bowel cancer developing by better understanding how cancer cells and healthy cells interact.
Researcher: Dr Vasiliki Koliaraki
Understanding how colorectal tumours hijack healthy cells
Complete Spain
Bowel cancer
Sometimes cancer treatment stops working if cancers become resistant to therapy so this team hope to improve survival rates by exploring potential new drugs.
Researcher: Dr Maite Huarte
Identifying new therapeutic approaches for treatment-resistant bowel cancer
Donate today to start new cures
Be part of the united effort to stop lives being cut short by cancer.