Project PI19/01580 “New immunotherapies for bladder cancer” directed by Dr. Carmen Álvarez Domínguez has been funded by the Carlos III Health Institute in the 2019 Call for Strategic Health Action 2017-2020, Health Research Projects for an amount of € 105,270.
Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer with a higher prevalence in men than in women, the third in charge of somatic mutations and one of the most immunogenic, after melanoma. Although some immunotherapies in bladder cancer have been approved, their immunological characterization has not yet been evaluated, nor are there biomarkers of the efficiency of these immunotherapies. We in this study are going to characterize the immunological response in bladder tumors and we are going to compare them with tumors that have more knowledge of this immune response, such as melanomas. Biomarkers of the efficiency of approved immunotherapies will be sought and will be compared with our proposal for new immunotherapy that the IDIVAL group has developed, Listeria-based nanovaccines. Not only will we look for these biomarkers in the biopsies of patients with these tumors, but we will also look for this “biological footprint” in the blood samples, which will allow us to easily follow these therapies in the future.
In addition, mouse models of bladder cancer and melanoma that admit human samples will be developed, in order to see in these models the efficiency and scope of these therapies. This information, which combines pre-clinical analysis of patient samples and immunological analysis in the laboratory, together with analysis of tumor immunology in mice, combines the research work of clinical researchers of different Hospital Services and the work of a research group. in applied basic immunology of the IDIVAL; what is a challenge of coordination and multidisciplinarity between the HUMV and the IDIVAL that we believe will allow great progress for patients in the future.
In the IDIVAL laboratory together with the HUMV Oncology Service, we are also working on other lines of possible immunotherapies for tumors in which immunotherapies do not work as in colon cancer and in being able to perform all pre-clinical analyzes to develop our Listeria-based immunotherapy with nanovaccines.
Collaborating researchers of the project: Dr. Fernando Rivera y Dr. Ignacio Durán Martínez (Servicio de Oncología Médica), Dra. Sonsoles Yañez (Servicio de Dermatología), Héctor Terán Navarro y David Salcines Cuevas (IDIVAL).
Other clinical collaborators not specifically in the project, but equally relevant and participating: Urology Department (Dr. Jose Luis Gutierrez, Dr. Mario Esteban, Dr. Felix Campos, Dr. Ernesto Herrero), Pathology Department (Dr. Ainara Azueta and Dr. Jose Javier Gomez Román), Medical Oncology Service (Dr. Marta Lopez-Brea and Dr. Almudena Garcia).
