Identification of therapeutic targets through nucleolin pathway and their use in association with N6L in cancer therapy - Preparation of phase II clinical trial – THERANUC

The development of targeted therapies in the field of cancer is currently a priority for several pharmaceutical companies and especially in the field of pancreatic cancer. This type of cancer is one that has the lowest survival rate (5% at 5 years) and whose mortality rate is increasing. It is the 4th leading cause of cancer deaths in France and could even become the second cause of death from cancer by 2020. There is currently no effective treatment for this type of pathology that remains asymptomatic with late diagnosis. Consequently, there is an urgently need to identify new therapies and molecular markers used in the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring. It is within this context that our project is presented. The main objectives of this project are to identify therapeutic targets through nucleolin (NCL) pathway to be used in association with an antagonist of NCL (N6L), to prepare the phase II clinical trial. According to previous data, all this study will be carried out on pancreatic cancer models on which we obtained both in vitro and in vivo promising data concerning the therapeutic effect of N6L. These studies will be performed on pancreatic cancer models. The structure of this project is divided into two tasks including: 1) a study on the choice of a combotherapy combining N6L and a molecule used in first-line chemotherapy against pancreatic cancer, 2) an analysis of transduction pathways involved in inhibiting NCL in order to develop new treatments in combination with N6L and selection of possible molecular markers. To ensure the achievement of this study, a consortium consisting of two teams of biologists with complementary expertises in the field of NCL, clinicians with expertise in pancreatic cancer and a biotechnology company has been assembled.