CRC1066: Nanodimensional polymer therapeutics for tumor therapy
In the coordinated research center (“Sonderforschungsberereich”) CRC1066 chemists, physicists, biologists and physicians develop functional nanoparticular carriers and investigate their potential to improve tumor-immunotherapy of the malignant melanoma.
In three different sub-areas teams from the Johannes Gutenberg-University (JGU) Mainz, the University Medical Center (UMC) Mainz and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P), supported by researchers from LMU Aachen, RWTH Aachen, TRON Mainz and Frauenhofer IMM Mainz, are strongly collaborating to 1) establish facile syntheses of functional nanoparticular carriers for immunomodulation, 2) develop novel precise characterization techniques under (immuno-)biological conditions, and 3) study their in vitro and in vivo (immuno-)performance in pre-clinical immune therapies against melanoma. For that purpose, a combination of (i) immune activation, ii) elimination/ reduction of immune tolerance and (iii) induction of localized inflammation are the key targets to investigate the advanced contribution of nanoparticular drug delivery systems in cancer immunotherapy.
Our group is particularly involved in projects A6 “Synthetic control of morphology and function in peptide based carrier systems” (Tanja Weil, MPI-P, with Matthias Barz, JGU), B4 “Polymer induced tumor-immunotherapy by in situ activation of antigen presenting cells” (Lutz Nuhn, MPI-P, with Stephan Grabbe and Hansjörg Schild, both UMC) and B11 “Proteins on nanocarriers: from the stealth effect to active targeting in vivo “ (Tanja Weil, MPI-P, with Stefan Tenzer and Volker Mailänder, both UMC).