Dr Carsten Hansen
University of Edinburgh
Awarded: £150,000
The challenge
As sarcoma develops, the cancer cells build a complicated web around themselves, made of other cells, molecules and blood vessels, whose job it is to protect and feed the cancer cells. This helps the cancer to grow and spread while avoiding being detected by the immune system. Scientists call this the tumour microenvironment.
Researchers have found that the fluid trapped inside this environment is under much higher pressure in sarcomas than in most other cancers. But what researchers don’t know is how sarcoma cells adapt to these high pressures and if this might impact how sarcoma responds to treatment.
How will this project tackle this challenge?
Dr Carsten Hansen and his team at the University of Edinburgh will study how sarcoma cells respond to their environment and identify new ways to target them. They will use advanced laboratory models, initially focusing on two sarcoma subtypes, leiomyosarcoma (LMS) and undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS), to recreate the high-pressure conditions found in tumours.
This will let them see how sarcoma cells behave over time, and by mapping these changes they hope to pinpoint potential therapeutic targets. The team will test which proteins or pathways are essential for cancer survival. They hope that by combining different approaches they will be able to identify ways to make sarcomas more sensitive to treatment, including treatments that only kill cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
What this means for people affected by sarcoma
This project will improve our understanding of how fluid pressure influences the way sarcoma cells grow and respond to treatment. In the longer term, this could open the door to treatments that are more effective against sarcoma while causing fewer side effects for patients.
