SweDeliver and Sara Mangsbo join new European consortium ON-TRACT
With funding from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, research center SweDeliver and Professor Sara Mangsbo are joining ON-TRACT, a European consortium where academia and industry aim to pave the way for new oligonucleotide-based drug therapies. “This grant enables us to strengthen our international networks while preparing the leading researchers of the future,” states Professor Mangsbo.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions allocates €609 million to 149 European doctoral programmes. One of the projects that receive funding is ON-TRACT, a new consortium that will work with a focus on exploring and developing cutting-edge oligonucleotide technologies to apply in future therapies.
“MSCA provides a strategically important grant that enables us to develop our international networks, while preparing the leading researchers of the future to step forward in translational projects with branches in both academia and industry,” states Sara Mangsbo, Professor of Protein and Antibody Drugs, who receives funding for two PhD positions with placements at Uppsala University's Department of Pharmacy.
Research center SweDeliver joins ON-TRACT
ON-TRACT emerges from the highly successful OLIGOMED, a EU-funded collaboration in which AstraZeneca and RISE, among others, had key positions. ON-TRACT has to date presented a number of additional innovative environments as partners, including Strike Pharma, the company founded by Sara Mangsbo in 2020. The recuitment of international research center SweDeliver is expected to generate further added value.
“The grant gives us the opportunity to assemble a strong team with the potential to pave the way for new oligonucleotide-based drugs for patients with high needs and rare diseass. In ON-TRACT we will focus on lung cancer and a number of other diagnoses where we can involve B cells for targeted drug delivery,” says Sara Mangsbo.
ON-TRACT is coordinated at the University of Southampton. The activities are conducted in four work packages with a focus on, among others, Smart synthesis methods, Development of new treatments for lung cancer, Advancing the treatments of B-cell malignancies and Training.
Facts
- In this call, the European Research Executive Agency (REA) received 1,417 applications, which gives a success rate of 10.6 %.
- Sara Mangsbo's research in immuno-oncology is oriented towards development and evaluation of novel biologicals and combinations thereof, where activation of tumor-specific T cells is key.
- The team also focuses on off-target effects related to these therapies, such as interactions with Fc receptors, the complement system and how this can be studied in humanized model systems.
text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt, Pernilla Sjöholm