Brain disease and cancer research: golden couple for breakthroughs, hopes new research centre Adore
Those suffering from cancer are less likely to have brain diseases. And vice versa. This remarkable fact is one of the reasons why from 2025 oncologists and neurologists will work together in the brand-new Adore research centre on the Zuidas. The cross-pollination of cancer and brain disease research should lead to breakthroughs for new therapies.
Now her research group is still in a remote corridor in the VU Medical Faculty, soon biochemist Henne Holstege will be working across the street among hundreds of neurologists and cancer researchers. Holstege is one of two thousand researchers who will work together in the brand-new Adore research centre, located right behind the Amsterdam UMC on the Zuidas. The new building will open its doors in early 2025.
Exchange
As the first research centre in the world, Adore will combine research into brain diseases and cancer. After all, these two fields are more related than you might think at first glance. While cancer cells continue to multiply uncontrollably, brain diseases cope with dying cells. So the ailment of one disease might well be part of the cure for the other, is the idea. Moreover, it seems that people with dementia are less likely to get cancer and vice versa: if you have cancer, your risk of dementia is presumably lower.
Centenarians
The two research fields meet, among others, at the immune system. “To stay healthy, it is important that the immune system is balanced,” Holstege explains. “In case of a tumour, the immune system has been lax while in people with dementia, it has gone too hard and cleared too many cells.”
As you get older, the immune system’s on-off switch starts working less well, which also increases the risk of cancer and dementia. For years, Holstege has been studying a group of healthy centenarians to find an explanation as to why it is that neurological diseases are spared them. Oncologists have now also joined the centenarian research.
Heredity also plays an important role in healthy ageing. Holstege: “If we know which hereditary factors are involved in a healthy immune system and what they do, we will be one step closer to a therapy for cancer and dementia.”
Catching up
Another reason for the collaboration is that brain research still has a big step to make, compared with cancer research. Over the last 30, 40 years, there has been a lot of money invested and large-scale research on cancer. This is the reason why 60 per cent of cancer patients are now curable. Brain diseases, on the other hand, are still hardly curable.
“The brain has long remained inaccessible to researchers,” Holstege explains. “It is hidden behind the skull and is much less easy to reach than a tumour where you can take tissue from and examine in the lab. Nowadays, advanced imaging does allow us to look into the living brain, and we can use blood analysis to estimate pathogenic processes in the brain. Because of these developments, investing in brain research is now more relevant than ever before.”
A lot of cellular techniques from cancer research also come in handy for brain disease research. Take CAR-T cell therapy from cancer research for example. That therapy provides white blood cells with a kind of “antenna” that allows them to detect and destroy cancer cells even better. Those same cells can now also enter the brain, making it useful for brain research as well.
Hundreds of millions
Besides researchers from the Amsterdam UMC, Adore explicitly wants to attract “top talents”, young, talented researchers who can advance in the research centre for the next ten years. Moreover, Adore wants to spare the researchers from the time-consuming search for research funding. To get that done over the next decade, “hundreds of millions” are needed. To this end, the research centre has enlisted the help of the Vriendenloterij (Dutch lottery) which is organising the Biggest Bingo Ever for cancer and brain diseases in September.
