Three researchers at Uppsala University receive ERC Synergy Grants

The research groups of Anna Dimberg and Magnus Essand at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, together with Thomas Tütting’s research group at the Department of Dermatology at the University Hospital of Magdeburg, have been awarded SEK 110 million (EUR 9,453,750) over six years for the VASC-IMMUNE research project. Of the total amount, Dimberg and Essand will each receive over SEK 36 million.

The project targets the blood vessels of tumours, focusing on getting more T cells (a type of white blood cell) to migrate from the blood to the tumour and on maintaining blood vessel function. The researchers will primarily concentrate on the brain tumour glioblastoma, which is currently incurable, and the skin cancer malignant melanoma.

“I have been studying blood vessels in glioblastoma and their interaction with immune cells for many years. I am confident that by comparing the vascular and immune landscapes of melanoma and glioblastoma, we will identify genes whose activity determines how tumour vessels interact with immune cells. We hope that the project will lead to the development of a new type of immunotherapy, where we stimulate the immune response by changing the function of blood vessels via gene therapy,” Dimberg explains.

Reprogramming tumour vessels

However, targeting and reprogramming tumour vessels in cancer patients is a great challenge. Magnus Essand’s research group will contribute by developing a novel virus vector that can specifically target tumour vessels while avoiding normal blood vessels.

“We have already shown that this is possible in mouse models of glioblastoma. Together, we will now translate our findings to human tumour vessels. We are building the vector to be able to infiltrate tumour vessels in general. This offers great potential for the results of our project to have an impact on other forms of cancer as well,” says Essand.

Oliver Schlotterer, Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Mathematics, and his colleagues Ruth Britto from Trinity College Dublin, Francis Brown from the University of Oxford and Axel Kleinschmidt from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, have been awarded SEK 116 million (EUR 9,986,500) for the MaScAmp project. Of this amount, SEK 26 million (EUR 2,263,950) will go to Schlotterer’s research group.

Expertise in mathematics and theoretical physics

The goal of MaScAmp is a new framework for fundamental interactions in physics in the form of a unified mathematical approach to scattering amplitudes. The project brings together a multidisciplinary research team with expertise in pure mathematics and theoretical physics who will develop a set of novel and efficient algorithmic methods with applications in mathematics, particle physics and gravity.

“My own research focuses on scattering amplitudes in string theory and has led to many fruitful exchanges with particle physicists and mathematicians. Together with my colleagues, we have a shared vision of a new paradigm for scattering amplitudes that will stimulate advances in mathematics and the development of publicly available computational software,” says Schlotterer.

Åsa Malmberg