Medicine for brain metastasis

Manuel Valiente

Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), Madrid, Spain

The development of metastases, the spread of cancer cells from the primary tumour to other organs or tissues, is the leading cause of cancer mortality.

There is therefore a need to improve the understanding, prevention and treatment of metastases. Currently, therapeutic decisions are made on the basis of the characteristics of the primary tumour, ignoring whether or not metastatic cancer cells will respond to the same therapy even though they have evolved in other parts of the body. Recent research indicates that metastatic cells undergo different adaptive changes and develop vulnerabilities and genetic signatures that can be used to categorise them and serve as therapeutic targets.

This project aims to develop an alternative treatment strategy for metastases to that currently used and based on the characteristics of the primary tumour. The team will employ biological material from the biobank of the Spanish Brain Metastasis Network (RENACER), made up of 19 reference hospitals, to identify genetic signatures of brain metastases and test molecules specifically targeted at each of them. The drugs will be tested in tissue cultures obtained from patient biopsies. A computational approach will be applied to prioritise the list of molecules most likely to respond based on the genetic signature of the metastasis. The objective of the project is to provide a solution for treating brain metastasis based on the vulnerabilities and genomic signatures identified in the secondary tumour regardless of the primary source, which will allow the development of a pioneering strategy to guide the diagnosis and personalise the treatment of brain metastases.

Establishment of a precision medicine pipeline to personalize the treatment of brain metastasis

€499,988.60