effect of host factors on the genesis and behaviour of malignant tumors. Development of new therapeutic strategies.

This project will be elaborated in collaboration with 3 research teams from other Flemish Universities: RUG (Mareel), KUL (Cassiman) and UIA (Van Marcke). the central aim is the development of new therapeutical strategies with gost cells that support the tumor as target. The VUB-group will adress the following questions: do myeloma cells perform transendothelial migration in vivo? Wich adhesion molecules are implicated in the initial binding of MM cells to the endothelium of the bone marrow? What is the role of matrix metalloproteinases in transendothelial migration? do th MMPs inhibitors, which are actually used in clinical cancer trials, block the in vivo homing of MM cells? For this project, human myeloma cell lines, patients samples and the in vivo 5T2 mouse model will be used.