Research and Advanced Education
IMM researcher funded to study immune response impairing hemophilia treatment
Vanessa Oliveira was the only European researcher to win an Early Career Bayer Hemophilia Award in this round
Vanessa Oliveira, researcher at Cellular Immunology Unit of IMM, won a prestigious and competitive Early Career Bayer Hemophilia Award with a research project to study immune response impairing hemophilia treatment. Vanessa Oliveira was the only European researcher to win this award in the 2010 round, which awarded 5 researchers worldwide. The Portuguese researcher will receive 170.000 € to develop her project during two years.
The researcher will develop a strategy to reprogramme the immune system of hemophilia patients to avoid rejection of the most used clotting therapeutics. The most common approach to treat hemophilia is based in recombinant, laboratory produced clotting factors. However, a relevant percentage of hemophilia patients develop immune responses against these recombinant clotting factors, which result in the failure of the treatment. Although there have been attempts to impair this undesired immune response, none of them has revealed efficient so far. Vanessa will study the causes for the limited efficacy of previously attempted methods to suppress undesirable immune response in hemophilia treatment and develop new strategies to induce the patient’s immune tolerance towards therapeutic clotting factors. This is a basic research project that will be developed in an animal model (mouse). In future, the project may be further developed to clinical studies.
If Vanessa´s basic research is successful, it may help reduce or eliminate the causes for the failure of current treatments, thus having a positive impact in future therapeutics for hemophilia patients. The project will be fully developed in Portugal, at the IMM’s Cellular Immunology Unit, led by researcher Luis Graca.
source: www.imm.fm.ul.pt
Vanessa Oliveira, researcher at Cellular Immunology Unit of IMM, won a prestigious and competitive Early Career Bayer Hemophilia Award with a research project to study immune response impairing hemophilia treatment. Vanessa Oliveira was the only European researcher to win this award in the 2010 round, which awarded 5 researchers worldwide. The Portuguese researcher will receive 170.000 € to develop her project during two years.
The researcher will develop a strategy to reprogramme the immune system of hemophilia patients to avoid rejection of the most used clotting therapeutics. The most common approach to treat hemophilia is based in recombinant, laboratory produced clotting factors. However, a relevant percentage of hemophilia patients develop immune responses against these recombinant clotting factors, which result in the failure of the treatment. Although there have been attempts to impair this undesired immune response, none of them has revealed efficient so far. Vanessa will study the causes for the limited efficacy of previously attempted methods to suppress undesirable immune response in hemophilia treatment and develop new strategies to induce the patient’s immune tolerance towards therapeutic clotting factors. This is a basic research project that will be developed in an animal model (mouse). In future, the project may be further developed to clinical studies.
If Vanessa´s basic research is successful, it may help reduce or eliminate the causes for the failure of current treatments, thus having a positive impact in future therapeutics for hemophilia patients. The project will be fully developed in Portugal, at the IMM’s Cellular Immunology Unit, led by researcher Luis Graca.
source: www.imm.fm.ul.pt
