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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) typically occurs in patients with chronic liver diseases and is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Response rates to immunotherapies, such as checkpoint inhibitors, are still very low and likely depend on an inflamed tumor. In this project, we aim to generate a cancer vaccine that can induce inflammation of HCC tumors and therefore boost response to immunotherapies. We will test our vaccine in two animal models of HCC that represent the 2 most common etiologies of human liver cancer.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus not only leads to an increased risk of heart failure, but also to more severe course of the disease. Pathophysiological processes of how diabetes negatively affects the heart are not well understood. Alterations in cardiac energy metabolism induced by diabetes may contribute to a poorer prognosis in patients with heart failure. The aim of the current study is to characterize and compare the cardiac metabolism of heart failure patients with and without diabetes using metabolome analyses.

Restrictive allograft syndrome (RAS) is one of the most important long-term complications that can occur after lung transplantation. We will use the innovative technology "Single Cell RNA Sequencing" to understand the molecular pathogenesis of RAS. "Single Cell RNA Sequencing" enables the analysis of mRNAs in hundreds of thousands of individual cells. This technology offers previously impossible insights into (diseased) cells, which will then be used to identify aberrant cell populations and their pathological gene expression profiles in the RAS lung.

Ziel dieses Projekts ist es, die Tumorumgebung in Metastasen des Bauchspeicheldrüsenkrebses besonders im Hinblick auf die Kommunikation zwischen Tumorzellen und dessen umgebende Zellen zu untersuchen. Ein besonderes Augenmerk soll hierbei auf die Analyse der schwerlöslichen Extrazellulärmatrixproteine gelegt werden, welche im primären, lokalisierten Bauchspeicheldüsenkrebs bereits mit dem Überleben der Patientinnen und Patienten assoziiert wurden. Zusätzlich wird die Regulation der Extrazellulärmatrixproteine der Metastasen durch einen epigenetischen Faktor untersucht.

Project partner:

Dr. med. Erwin Andreas Scharberg
DRK-Blutspendedienst Baden-Württemberg-Hessen
Institut Baden-Baden

Univ.-Prof. Dr. med. Tamam Bakchoul
IKT Tübingen
Universität Tübingen

Dr. med. Torsten Schulze
DRK-Blutspendedienst NSTOB
Springe