Call for EoI MSCA-PF 2021: New Therapeutic Targets (TargetsLab)

Brief description of the Institution

The University of Girona (UdG) is located in Girona city and is part of the Catalan public university system since 1992. The UdG, deeply rooted in Catalonia and the Catalan culture, is one of the primary economic and cultural motors of the region. At the same time, it pursues a vocation of universality and openness to all traditions and cultures

UdG is a public institution devoted to excellence in teaching and research and to participating in the progress and development of society through the creation, transmission, dissemination and criticism of knowledge related to the sciences, technology, the humanities, the social sciences and the arts.

In the last 10 years, the UdG has participated into more than 160 European Projects, including 6 ERC projects.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

Oncoen3D is a pioneering project in Spain using the 3D printing technology with the aim of enriching cancer stem cells (CSCs), which is the cause of a high percentage of treatment recurrences in different cancers including breast and lung.

The research team involves members of two different research groups from the medical and engineering fields. From medicine, there is New Therapeutic Targets (TargetsLab), led by Prof. Teresa Puig and, from engineering, the Product, Process and Production Engineering Research Group (GREP) led by Prof. Joaquim de Ciurana. Collaboration between both groups was born in 2014, and involve the cooperation between Biochemist, Biologist, Engineers, and Physicians. Together they have shown that cell culture in manufactured scaffolds by Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) and electrospinning with PLA or PCL polymeric material provides better physiologically environment and it leads to an enrichment of the CSCs population of human cancer cell lines as well. These two research areas have joined forces with the objective of identifying new targets and biomarkers for these two highly-incident malignant cancers.

New Therapeutic Targets (TargetsLab) is a multidisciplinary research team with a high experience in the synthesis, characterization and evaluation of the pre-clinical anti-cancer effects of novel synthetic compounds with the aim of enlighten future combination strategies for the treatments of HER2+, Triple Negative (TN) breast and lung cancer resistant to currently available therapies. Currently, they are focused on the advanced manufacturing technologies (such as 3D printing and electrospinning) to obtain scaffolds for three-dimensional cell culture, which have been proved to enrich and isolate the cancer stem-like cell subpopulation in breast and lung cancer cell models. Our research is focused in the identification of novel biomarkers (proteins, genes or epigenetic markers) to develop and test synthetic anti-cancer compounds (or novel treatment approaches) for those patients who have progressed to cancer treatment.

Product, Process and Production Engineering Group (GREP) is made up of PhD in Industrial Engineering, Mechanical engineers and industrial design engineers. Research focuses on various aspects of the product design, manufacturing processes and production economy. One goal is about characterization of manufacturing processes such as milling, micromachining, incremental sheet forming, ultrasound moulding and recently those technologies related to additive manufacturing process which includes 3D printing technologies.

The results derived from our research have been presented (oral and poster presentation) in several national and international meetings, increasing the group visibility.

Five of the most relevant publications written by the IP in the last 5 years:

• [1] Polonio-Alcalá, E, et al. "Fatty Acid Synthase Inhibitor G28 Shows Anticancer Activity in EGFR Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Resistant Lung". Cancers 2020.
• [2] Palomeras S, et al. "Epigenetic silencing of TGFBI Confers Resistance to Trastuzumab in Human Breast Cancer." Breast Cancer Rest 2019.
• [3] Rabionet M, et al. "Electrospinning PCL scaffolds manufacture for three-dimensional breast cancer cell culture." Polymers 2017.
• [4] Giró-Perafita, A, et al. "Fatty acid synthase expression with clinicohisthopathological features in triple negative breast cancer". Oncotarget 2017.
• [5] Giró-Perafita, A, et al. "Preclinical evaluation of Fatty Acid Synthase and EGFR inhibition in triple negative breast cancer. Clin Cancer Res 2016.

Successful candidates will join a dynamic and young research group with strong interactions and multidisciplinary research. The group offers a stimulating research atmosphere and an environment in which collaboration and exchange of ideas and techniques is actively encouraged.

Main research lines of interest

The current efforts of research group are focused on the design and utilization of molecular and technological tools for targeting particularly breast cancer progression and recurrence and misregulated wound healing processes. For studying and understanding such complex processes we focused our efforts in:

1. Preclinical (sensitive and chemoresistant cellular models, tumoroids and ortoxenopatients) and clinical (patient tumor samples) models for the evaluation of novel biomarkers (proteins, genes or epigenetic markers) to develop and test synthetic anti-cancer compounds (or novel treatment approaches) for those patients who have progressed to breast cancer.
2. Design and manufacture several three-dimensional (3D) structures to implement 3D culture of preclinical TNBC models (cells and tumoroids) to enrich and isolate breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs).

In a near future, the group will try to implement this technology in a specific subtype of lung adenocarcinoma EGFR-mutated. This mutation causes the development of primary or secondary resistance to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).

Suggested Panel

Life Sciences (LIF)

Eligibility criteria

At the deadline for the submission of proposals, researchers (*):

• Should be in possession of PhD
• Would have up to 8 years research experience after PhD (exceptions: career breaks, work outside research, research outside Europe for reintegrating researchers);
• Must comply with the Mobility rule – different, depending on the chosen MSCA type (please see eligibility rules)
• Ph.D. in Life Sciences (Biology, Biomedicine or Biotechnology). Furthermore, the applicant should be able to perform team-oriented as well as independent work. Practical experiences in one or more following subjects is advantageous: Molecular biology, cell biology, and cell culture.

How to apply

Researchers willing to apply should check that they fulfil the eligibility criteria and then send an expression of interest to the contact person before 18/06/2021, consisting of:

• A short CV including the list of publications: Only CVs with considerable scientific achievements will be considered. Candidates should have an excellent track record of research; they should demonstrate the ability to grow into scientific/technological leadership roles.
• Letter of motivation (maximum one page long)
• Two letters of reference
• A two-page research proposal