Professor Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, InFLAMES group leader from the University of Turku in Finland, is investigating the links between human cytomegalovirus and brain tumours in a multi-million euro research project conducted in collaboration between researchers in Finland, Denmark, and Sweden. The Lundbeck Foundation has awarded a grant of approximately €4 million for the project.

Söderberg-Nauclér applied for the grant together with Professor Jiri Bartek from the Danish Cancer Institute in Copenhagen. Their project is entitled “Causal Role, Mechanistic Impact and Therapeutic Targeting of Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in Brain Cancer”.

The research groups of both Bartek and Soderberg-Nauclér will investigate the molecular basis and significance for neuroscience of the emerging links between the presence of Human Cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and the development and therapy responses in the most aggressive form of brain tumours, glioblastoma. The work will be carried out in close collaboration between Bartek´s group at the Danish Cancer Institute in Copenhagen and Soderberg-Nauclér´s groups at MediCity in Turku, Finland, and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.

The research groups will explore how HCMV, a virus that latently infects most people worldwide and is commonly found in brain tumours, can cause or promote the progression of glioblastoma, the most frequent and highly malignant brain cancer to which no efficient treatment currently exists.

HCMV is a member of the herpes family and remains in the body’s cells after infection. Research has shown that HCMV becomes active in many different cancers in addition to glioblastoma. However, only certain variant strains of HCMV seem to be highly associated with cancer, which suggests that only rare HCMV strains may be viruses that promote cancer. The groups have also discovered that antiviral therapy might significantly prolong survival time in patients with glioblastoma.

“Our aim is to provide deep new insights into how HCMV variant strains interact with host cells and affect brain cell metabolism and tumour development, as well as to deliver validated clues about how cancer therapies could be improved, hopefully paving the way towards a change in the current standard-of-care glioblastoma treatment,” says Professor Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér.