Vijay Pal, a biotechnologist from India with a PhD in supramolecular chemistry, has recently been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral fellowship funded by the European Union. The project TRAIN – Tumour Regulation Assisted by Immunity and Nanotechnology – will be developed in the Molecular Biomaterials group at INEB/i3S under the supervision of Helena Azevedo and co-supervision of Maria José Oliveira, of the Tumour and Microenvironment Interactions research group, and has been awarded close to 160 k€ for two years.
TRAIN aims to develop innovative therapies for advanced cancer that are more efficient and are available to a greater number of cancer patients. For that, Vijay Pal explains that they “will leverage enzyme activities in the tumor microenvironment to boost the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies via molecularly engineered peptide nanomaterials capable of metabolic modulation of tumors and release of chemotherapeutic drugs”.
The team will focus on pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD) and will develop biomimetic 3D PAAD models to test the proposed combined chemo- and immuno-therapy. To accomplish this goal, add Vijay Pal, “we will use a multidisciplinary approach that will employ concepts from peptide nanotechnology, enzymology, immunology and cancer biology, together with cutting-edge materials science, proteomics and cell biology methods”.
This project is aligned with “The Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan” aimed at reducing the negative impact of cancer for patients, their families and healthcare systems, and addressing cancer-associated disparities across countries, while providing training and international career development opportunities for a young and creative researcher at the intersection of peptide nanotechnology and cancer immunology.
These highly competitive fellowships foster excellent research and promote the career development of the fellows through advanced training, international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral mobility. In this call, 1235 proposals were approved out of 7044 submitted proposals, 25 of which were awarded to Portuguese organisations. This fellowship and the arrival of Vijay Pal to INEB/i3S contributes to one of the goals of MOBILIsE of increasing the number of international researchers at the institute.