Project
The ZAP cancer project plans to improve access to scientific excellence, optimize research management and accelerate the exchange of personnel, knowledge, and ideas in the European
Research Area (ERA) and the two participating institutions from the widening countries; the Institute of Oncology Ljubljana (IOLJ) and the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) of University of Ljubljana. ZAP cancer will expand the existing collaborative network with three leading European institutions: Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology, a department of the CNRS (IPBS-CNRS), Toulouse, France, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL), Leuven, Belgium, The Institute of Translational Pharmacology, Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) and a new partner: The Medical University of Graz (MUG), Graz, Austria. Through the proposed project, a multidisciplinary network of cancer research centers will collaborate to establish a state-of-the-art, high-throughput multiomics in vitro and in vivo research platform at IOLJ and FHS that will provide them with valuable new expertise and knowledge that will enhance their potential for future successful applications at the European and international levels.
Scientific aims
Aim 1
To develop and implement the state-of-the-art, high-throughput, multi-omics in vitro and in vivo research platform that will be used to study the effects of ICD induced by electrochemotherapy on the activation of the anti-tumor immune response.
Aim 2
To examine and delineate the molecular and cellular mechanisms at the in vitro and in vivo level governing the type of cell death after electrochemotherapy in melanoma and colorectal carcinoma, to fully exploit the potential of ICD induced by electrochemotherapy with BLM, CDDP, and OXA, and then to translate the local efficacy of electrochemotherapy combined with gene electrotransfer of pDNA encoding ICIs into a systemic one.
