Four important projects

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Cancer is one of the most common causes of illness in our society. Around a third of us will suffer from cancer at some point during our lifetime.

Every day millions of aging or damaged cells are cleared out of our body, and newly formed cells take their place to perform the body’s functions. The body has an amazing capacity to compensate for lost cells and recognises when cells have been replenished again. The balance between the accelerator and the brake in cell growth is regulated by complex interaction between our genes. If the activity of the growth-regulating genes is disturbed, with a braking gene losing its braking power or a growth-stimulating gene becoming overactive, the risk of a cancer forming is increased.

Healthcare is getting better at diagnosing and treating cancers as we learn more about the mechanisms behind how they occur. Great progress has been made in treating cancer, but despite this the therapies are not effective in certain patients. In recent years, therefore, researchers have increasingly focused on trying to find treatments that are tailored to the individual patient.

In 2020 the Erling-Persson Foundation granted funding to various projects that all aim in different ways to achieve more personalised treatments for cancer. The hope is that new treatments will be more precise, have fewer side effects and be more effective.

LOST GENES COULD BE ACHILLES HEEL

Tobias Sjöblom, Uppsala University SEK 9 M / 3 YEARS Tobias Sjöblom at Uppsala University is working on such a new method. It is hoped that the method will target cancer cells using drugs that focus on the genetic changes that can arise when cancer cells multiply. The background to this is that cancer cells – which, among other things, are characterised by more or less uninhibited growth – also become worse at transferring perfect copies of the genetic material to the daughter cells. Often various genes, or parts of genes, are lost along the way.

The research group has shown that there are substances which effectively kill tumour cells that have lost a specific gene during the development of colorectal cancer. So long as healthy genes are present, however, they give protection from the toxic effect of the substances. The project has found a further ‘loss gene’ and is looking for additional drug candidates capable of killing tumour cells that lack these specific genes. The clever part is that the surrounding normal cells, which have not lost any genes, are not vulnerable to the drug. In the best of worlds, then, brutal treatment could be targeted at the cancer cells while healthy cells are spared entirely.

PROTEIN MAPS SHOW THE WAY TO TREATMENT

Janne Lehtiö, Uppsala University SEK 7.5 M / 3 YEARS At Karolinska Institutet, Janne Lehtiö’s research group is working on another strategy for finding personalised treatments for cancer. The tendency of cancer cells to make mistakes when copying the genetic material to the daughter cells leads not just to the loss of genes, but also to the occurrence of new gene combinations. If the new gene combinations can be read by the machinery in the cell which produces proteins – using the genes as a template – then new proteins may arise. These new proteins, known as neoantigens, are thus not present in the healthy cells. Attempts are therefore being made to find active ingredients for drugs that are able to attack the cancer cells via these neoantigens.

To find neoantigens, Lehtiö’s research group has characterised the entire set of proteins expressed by two types of leukaemia: acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL). The aim is to use the information about the protein structures, in combination with genetic markers and blood markers, to identify subgroups of these types of leukaemia and be able to tailor treatment to the specific characteristics of the subgroup. This work enables patient groups with different prognoses and differences in sensitivity to drugs to be identified.

THE RIGHT DRUG, AT THE RIGHT TIME, IN THE RIGHT DOSE, TO THE RIGHT PERSON

Christel Bergström, Uppsala University SEK 9 M / 3 YEARS Knowing which drug is effective against a certain type of cancer, or in the fight against another disease, is of course essential if patients are to be given treatment that works. For the drug to be of most benefit and at the same time have as

few side effects as possible, it is also important to adjust the dose and the preparation to the individual patient.

Many important medical drugs are not suitable for children. They are available for adults, in tablets of a strength far too high for small bodies. Often, therefore, tablets have to be broken up to be given to children – making it difficult to give a precise dose without the assistance of care staff.

Christel Bergström is a pharmacist and researcher at Uppsala University. Christel’s research group wants to make safe preparations of drugs so that the right dose can be given safely also to children. This issue most notably concerns children with cancer or neurological diseases. Among other things, the group has developed a method based on 3D printing that allows individually tailored doses of drugs to be produced. Their hope is that in the future, children will not only receive the right dose of their drug but will also not have to spend as much time in the hospital during their treatment.

LIVING MEANS MORE THAN JUST SURVIVING

Edwin Jager, Linköping University SEK 10 M / 3 YEARS When treating a serious illness the main aim is, of course, to get the person well again – preferably with as few side effects and setbacks as possible. We often equate ‘getting well’ with being free from acute illness. For many people, however, a period of rehabilitation is also needed before they can once again live as they did before becoming ill. The coronavirus pandemic has made us aware that rehabilitation can take a long time and require a lot of effort – both mentally and physically.

One noticeable and very common lingering effect of illness is muscle weakness. In 2020 the Erling-Persson Foundation awarded funding to a materials research project that hopes to contribute to helping people with muscle weakness get mobile again more quickly in the future. In a collaboration between Linköping University (LiU) and the University of Borås, led by Edwin Jager of LiU, research is being carried out into new functional materials. The materials can be spun and woven into textiles, which in turn can react to electrical voltages so that the textile fibres contract like a muscle.

One potential application of the functional materials is to design a textile-based soft “exoskeleton” that can improve mobility in patients with muscle weakness. The team is developing new fibres as well as techniques for spinning these into yarn, and in parallel is developing various methods for weaving the yarns into textiles.

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