microenvironment

A team of researchers from the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) at the University of Porto has identified persistent vulnerabilities in colorectal tumors that could be exploited to develop personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines. The study, published in the journal Gut, shows that although these tumors can evade immune surveillance, they retain neoantigens capable of eliciting an effective immune response.

This review covers the findings related to alterations in the tumor microenvironment induced by KRAS activation in cancer cells, bringing to attention new mechanisms of KRAS-induced tumor progression which may have a great impact on the design of new therapies that target cancer cells by abrogating their interaction with the tumor microenvironment.

Authors and Affiliations:

In the context of the multidisciplinary research project CancerSys - Multiscale modeling for personalized therapy of bone metastasis, financed by FCT and involving the institutions IDMEC, INESC-ID, IT (Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa), Hospital de Santa Maria and IMM, a dynamic computational model capable of representing the biochemical aspects of bone metastases growth and the effect of the therapies used in this disease.