Two new ERC grants: research for cancer treatment and holographic endoscopy

More than three and a half million crowns for a year and a half of high-quality research on their own terms – this is the amount that 55 scientists will receive from the European Union budget. The winners of the newly announced ERC Proof of Concept grants were announced on the 24th of May by the European Research Council (ERC). Two of the grants will also go to the Czech Republic, both of them to the workplaces of the Czech Academy of Sciences, being awarded to Milan Vrábel and Tomáš Čižmár.

The ERC Proof of Concept grants are intended for previous ERC grant recipients whose results offer interesting possibilities for further application in practice. The additional funding is intended to enable verification of their commercial or social potential. In the Czech Republic, the recipients are Milan Vrábel from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the CAS, and Tomáš Čižmár from the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the CAS in Brno.

Killer cell navigation

A surprising discovery made under Milan Vrábel's ERC Starting Grant could lead to a new method usable in treating viral diseases or in anti-cancer immunotherapy.

In the original research, scientists learned to colour-code cellular structures and biologically active substances, so they could directly monitor the effect of an anti-cancer drug in living cells. "Then we found out that we could do much more - for example, we could place a molecule on them that could quickly direct an immune cell directly to a tumour cell in order to destroy it," says Milan Vrábel.

The researchers found out that by using the developed methodology, they can, for example, target natural killer cells (NK cells), which can be helped by the added molecule to more quickly find and destroy cancer cells that would otherwise escape their attention.

Immunotherapy already uses a similar method, using modified immune system cells to destroy cancer cells more efficiently. However, the method is very expensive and complicated because it relies on genetic modification of T-lymphocytes taken from the body of the specific patient for whom the treatment is intended. On the other hand, Milan Vrábel's team's new method allows quick modification of NK cells using simple chemical reactions from prepared ingredients, and, most importantly, it also allows their use for a different patient than the one from whom they were taken.

"Thanks to this grant, we will be able to directly compare our method with the already used method of modified T-lymphocytes, in order to verify its real benefit. If the study is successful, our method could be put into practice within a few years," adds Milan Vrábel.

New opportunities for holographic endoscopy

The goal of Tomáš Čižmár is to introduce a new complete technology platform for investigating the impact of deep brain stroke. For his research, he is going to use the holographic endoscope, a globally unique tool that has been developed by his team for more than 10 years, and thanks to the grant, he will be able to improve it technologically to a significant extent. The endoscope is specially adapted to allow inducing a controlled stroke in a selected brain structure of an animal model.

"The already available imaging capacity of the device will make it easier to navigate, and after inducing a controlled stroke, it will be possible to monitor the changes in the clusters of neurons in the given area, and also the termination of signalling activity," explains Tomáš Čižmár. This represents a significant extension of the device's usability from the perspective of users in the field of neuroscience.

Neurological disorders are one of the most serious social problems worldwide. The WHO states that stroke is the second leading cause of death with an annual mortality rate of approximately 6.5 million, and approximately 50% of survivors are chronically disabled.

"Our research should provide the relevant scientific community with a tool to uncover the many secrets of these serious diseases and help in their treatment as well as prevention," says Tomáš Čižmár, explaining the crucial importance of scientific research for the future.

The European Research Council (ERC) was established in 2007 and it awards grants from the European Union budget to support excellent science in all fields. The ERC does not support networks or international consortia, but individual researchers and their research teams. The researcher can be of any nationality, but the chosen host institution must be located in some EU member state, or in a country associated with the EU Framework Programme. The only evaluation criterion is scientific excellence - both of the project proposal and of the researcher. In addition to their previous results in the field, researchers are expected to come up with a completely new revolutionary idea that is not a mere continuation of their previous achievements, but which can significantly influence their field, push its boundaries or open up new research perspectives.

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