In March, Cancer Grand Challenges announced nine new challenges, with 178 interdisciplinary, world-class global teams submitting bold ideas to take them on. Today (5 September 2023), 12 teams have been shortlisted to further their research and compete for up to $25m in funding.
CSCI PI Maria Alcolea has been announced as one of the Cambridge researchers in the shortlisted team researching cancer cell plasticity (PLASTICITY-Tx team) alongside team lead Cédric Blanpain and scientists from 11 other institutions.
Cancer Grand Challenges is a funding initiative co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the NIH National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA which supports a global community of researchers to tackle some of the greatest challenges facing cancer research. The PLASTICITY-Tx team will focus on increased understanding of cancer cell plasticity, a mechanism that can lead to drug resistance in and progression of cancer cells. With better knowledge of this mechanism, the effectiveness of current therapies may be increased.
The PLASTICITY-Tx team will now receive seed funding along with the other shortlisted teams to draft a full research proposal and compete for up to $25m in funding. Successful teams will be announced in March 2024.
Maria Alcolea says, “Our team believes that one of most fundamental barriers to successfully treat cancer lies in the cells’ remarkable plasticity. Cancer cells have the ability to constantly and relentlessly change and adapt, making it very difficult to successfully eradicate this aggressive disease. The PLASTICITY-Tx team brings together an interdisciplinary team, with complementary expertise in different aspects of cancer plasticity. We are proposing a cutting-edge experimental plan, aimed at deciphering the mechanisms triggering tumour cell plasticity during therapy resistance and metastasis to an extent never before envisaged. We are convinced that work in this area will pave the way towards a new era of cancer therapeutics."
"We had a fantastic response from the global research community who rose to the task and submitted bold and innovative ideas to take on our new challenges. We are pleased to have a shortlist of 12 teams whose proposed research approaches we believe hold the greatest potential to make the progress against these cancer challenges that we urgently need. I'm looking forward to seeing how the teams develop their approaches further in their full applications," says Dr David Scott, Director, Cancer Grand Challenges.