With the Proof of Concept funding line, the ERC offers grants to recipients of ERC (Startup, Consolidator, Advanced or Synergy) research funding with 150,000 Euros to develop promising ideas with commercial or social potential to scale proof of concept. With this funding, Olaf Groß and his team in the Metabolism and Inflammation Group at the Institute of Neuropathology Medical Center – University of Freiburg will test whether a new class of active protective drugs can detect the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapies or vaccines against diseases contagious.
Groß examines the location of a protein called the inflammasome within macrophages, specific cells of the body’s immune system that circulate nappies for signs of danger. When their inflammasome is activated, macrophages trigger the alert by releasing strong factors called cytokines. These cytokines alert other cells in the body, initiating an inflammatory response that helps other immune cells attack cancer cells or diseases, explains Groß. Within the context of his ERC Initiation Grant, he and his team discovered a new class of small molecules that activate the inflammasome vigorously and specifically, acting as turbo boosters for the immune system.
“There has been good impetus for the development of inflammasome inhibitors for the treatment of inflammatory diseases”, explains Groß. “But we believe that perhaps in the right clinical setting inflammasome promoters could be just as valuable,” he said. During the proof-of-concept phase, Groß and his team test whether their IMMUNOSTIM fertilizers improve the effectiveness of cancer treatment and vaccines.
We will also be looking for commercial partners to further develop this promising new class of immunotherapeutics. “
Olaf Groß, University of Freiburg
Groß received his doctorate from the Technical University of Munich in 2008. After a postdoctoral study at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland he founded an independent research group focusing on the inflammasome at the Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich. Since 2017, Groß is a Professor at the University of Freiburg in the Institute of Neuropathology of the University Medical Center. He is Speaker of the University of Freiburg ‘s Emergency Field in Metabolic Research and a member of the CIBSS Excellence Group – the Center for Integrated Biological Signage Studies. Within CIBSS it examines the signaling mechanisms responsible for inflammasome activity with the IMMUNOSTIM assemblages and scratches for new molecules that alter metabolic and immune signaling processes.