Why do some patients respond to a promising cancer therapy while others do not? Thanks to an ERC Starting Grant, Guido van Mierlo of Radboud university medical center will spend the next five years searching for the answer.
Natural killer (NK) cells are a crucial part of the immune system. They continuously patrol the body, searching for abnormal cells such as cancer cells. To do this, they use receptors, specialized proteins located on their surface. A receptor can be compared to a tiny grasping arm that fits a specific marker on another cell. When such a marker is present, the receptor binds to it and sends a signal. By integrating signals from multiple receptors, NK cells determine whether a cell is healthy or whether something may be wrong.
Although NK cells naturally help eliminate cancer cells, they are not always successful. Cancer cells can evade detection by the immune system or release signals that suppress immune responses. In addition, there may simply be too few active NK cells present to mount an effective attack against a tumor.
Despite these challenges, NK cells hold great promise for cancer treatment. In NK cell therapy, patients receive additional NK cells that have been activated in advance, enabling them to identify and destroy cancer cells more effectively. However, the treatment does not benefit every patient. Why NK cell therapy is successful in some individuals but not in others remains largely unknown.
A unique code
Researcher Guido van Mierlo of Radboudumc believes that the effectiveness of an NK cell may depend on a unique code: the specific combination of receptors displayed on its surface. Over the next five years, his research aims to decipher this code. To achieve this, Van Mierlo will use a technology he developed himself. This technique allows researchers to map, with unprecedented speed and precision, both the receptors present on an NK cell and their exact location on the cell surface.
He will then investigate which receptors enable NK cells to recognize cancer cells and how their spatial organization on the cell surface influences this process. ‘If we can decipher this code, we can investigate whether NK cells that lack these characteristics can be engineered to recognize and attack cancer cells more effectively,’ says Van Mierlo. ‘Ultimately, our goal is to improve the effectiveness of NK cell therapy so that many more cancer patients can benefit from this treatment.’
About the ERC Starting Grants
A total of 421 researchers have been awarded an ERC Starting Grant, including 33 based in the Netherlands. Altogether, €705 million has been allocated through this funding round. The grants, worth an average of €1.7 million each, will enable researchers to establish their own research programs, build teams and develop their most promising ideas over the next five years.
Established by the European Union in 2007, the European Research Council (ERC) is Europe's leading funding organization for frontier research. It supports outstanding researchers of all nationalities and ages in pursuing ambitious projects across Europe. The ERC offers four principal funding schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants.
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