Global Team Awarded $25M for Cancer Avoidance
A global, interdisciplinary research team has received up to $25 million from Cancer Grand Challenges to research cancer avoidance. The team, which includes a co-investigator from CDI Labs, will be led from the Institut Imagine in Paris.
The "Cancer Avoidance" challenge flips the script on traditional cancer research, which has largely focused on what causes cancer. Instead, the ATLAS team will investigate the opposite: what protects certain individuals who have high-risk factors, like heavy smoking or genetic predispositions, yet never develop the disease. The goal is to uncover the biological mechanisms that provide this resilience. At the heart of their strategy is the study of autoantibodies—antibodies that the body makes against its own molecules. The team hypothesizes that specific patterns of these autoantibodies might help the immune system identify and eliminate cancerous cells before they can establish themselves. Their research will build on previous work that linked autoantibodies to the severity of COVID-19. To find these protective signals, researchers will create a "Cancer Antibody ATLAS" by analyzing data from unique groups of people. This includes cancer-free centenarians, individuals with high-risk exposures who remain healthy, and even twins where one develops cancer and the other doesn't. This ambitious project requires a blend of expertise, showcasing different career paths. Patient-facing roles, like clinical researchers and oncologists, are essential for working with these unique patient cohorts, managing trials, and gathering samples and data. A typical day for these professionals involves direct patient interaction, overseeing trial protocols, and collaborating with a multidisciplinary team of healthcare providers. On the other side of the collaboration are the tech-focused roles. Computational biologists and bioinformaticians will be crucial for making sense of the immense datasets generated. Their days are spent coding, developing algorithms, and using computational models to identify the specific autoantibody patterns from the patient data that could be the key to avoiding cancer. The ATLAS team's leader, Dr. Paul Bastard from the Institut Imagine, has a background that bridges both worlds with an MD-PhD. His prior research successfully identified how autoantibodies play a role in severe viral diseases, demonstrating the power of this approach and paving the way for its application in cancer research.
