Leanne Li will lead new Cancer Grand Challenges team, and Vivian Li joins UCL-led team.
Two Crick researchers have each joined a global Cancer Grand Challenges team taking on two of the toughest challenges in cancer research. Leanne Li will lead a team exploring the nervous system and cancer, while Vivian Li’s team, led by Bart Vanhaesebroeck from University College London, will investigate how to rewire cancer cells to their disadvantage.
Founded in 2020 by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the US, Cancer Grand Challenges aims to deliver the progress against cancer we urgently need by funding diverse, interdisciplinary research teams that span institutions and countries.
Leanne and Vivian’s projects are among five new Grand Challenge teams announced today, each receiving up to $25m over approximately five years. The funded teams span 9 countries, 34 institutions, and unite more than 42 investigators and researchers.
Led by Leanne Li, group leader of the Cancer-Neuroscience Laboratory at the Crick, team InteroCANCEption will investigate the role of interoception, the brain’s ability to monitor the internal environment of the body, in allowing the nervous system to track and influence tumour formation and progression.
Uniting clinicians, advocates and scientists from a wide range of disciplines, the team will chart how tumours in the lung, pancreas and colon connect to the nervous system. They will track the two-way flow of signals between tumours and the brain, and consider how inflammation might impact these pathways. This could help develop new treatments by altering how the brain communicates with tumours, using neuroprosthetic devices to gently manipulate how the brain responds to cancer.
Leanne Li said: “I'm delighted to embark on this challenge and look forward to working with such an interdisciplinary team of world-leading scientists.”
Read more about Leanne's project.
Vivian Li, group leader of the Stem Cell and Cancer Biology Laboratory at the Crick, also known as the Bowelbabe Laboratory, joins the REWIRE-CAN Grand Challenge team, led by Bart Vanhaesebroeck at UCL. Focusing on bowel cancer, the team are exploring hyperactivating key cancer genes to push cancer cells into a stressed state, causing them to die. This subverts the traditional path in drug development: inhibiting these cancer genes, which has led to resistance. Vivian and the team believe that precise ‘signalling modulators’ might reprogramme cancer cells into vulnerable states, disrupting a finely tuned ‘Goldilocks’ state of gene activity.
The team will test compounds that could be potential new drugs in lab-grown models from patients’ cancer cells, called organoids, in a dish and transplanted into mice. They’ll use genetic screening to work out which genes each compound targets. A second part of the project will then focus on which drugs can push cancer cells out of a foetal-like state, which helps them hide from current chemotherapeutics.
Vivian Li said: “It’s a real privilege to be part of a Cancer Grand Challenge team, working with exceptional scientists across the world to find new treatments for bowel cancer.”
Read more about Vivian's project.
This is the first time two researchers at the Crick have appeared on successful teams in a given funding round, and the first time a Crick researcher is leading a challenge.
The Crick’s director, Edith Heard, said: “These two ambitious initiatives tackle important gaps in knowledge in cancer research. Both involve out-of-the-box thinking, from bringing together the previously discrete disciplines of neuroscience and cancer biology or subverting the status quo of how we design drugs to target genes that cause cancer.
“For Leanne and Vivian and their teams, the opportunity to work closely with researchers across the world with a shared goal will be invaluable.”
David Scott, Director of Cancer Grand Challenges, said: “Cancer Grand Challenges research and breakthroughs are made possible through our co-founders and visionary partners. Thanks to their incredible $125 million funding this year, we’re able to unite exceptional research teams from across the globe to tackle the most complex problems in cancer today. Together, we’re creating opportunities for bold team science that could redefine what’s possible for people affected by cancer.”
