Innate Immune Response

To date, metastasis has been described as a process by which free tumor cells travel through the bloodstream, arrive at a new organ, settle, and colonize it. This description is poor. Our previous data have shown that fusion cells, as a result of a co-culture of tumor cell lines and human monocytes, exhibited high mobility, aggressiveness and invasiveness. Our primary goal is to move from cell lines to a real system, using samples from patients with colorectal cancer.  We offer the opportunity to participate in a project focuses on establishing an alternative explanation for metastasis and finding weak points where it could be possible to pharmaceutically control this process.

The candidate will be in touch with a number of cellular and molecular biology techniques as well as new concepts in tumorimmunology.