DC-THERA, initiated in January 2005, is a five-year € 7.6 million initiative to focus on dendritic cell (DC) immunobiology and its therapeutic applications. The consortium  comprises a core set of 32 groups of scientists, clinicians and SMEs across Europe whose collective contributions to the project are valued in excess of € 72 million. We also have a growing number of Associated Partners, currently almost 40 groups from across Europe including several from the New and Candidate member States. DC-THERA aims to integrate their activities into an ambitious Joint Programme of Activities (JPA) to undertake translational medicine and develop novel DC-based immunotherapies for cancer and HIV.

Overview of Project Objectives

Dendritic cell (DC) immunobiology has enormous potential for development of new immunotherapies for cancer and infectious disease. Europe possesses a critical mass of leaders in the field who have pioneered many innovative advances and provided initial proof of principle for the approach. DC-THERA, ‘Dendritic Cells for Novel Immunotherapies’ is a Network of Excellence (NoE) established under the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). Its objectives are to translate genomic, proteomic and bioinformatic information, with knowledge from molecular cell biology and pre-clinical models, into therapeutic endpoints: clinical trials of DC-based therapies for cancer and HIV. Its aims are to promote the integration of the activities of 26 participant groups of scientists and clinicians, and 6 SMEs, across Europe over its five year duration; additionally it has incorporated 39 further groups as Associated Partners of the Network, including several groups from new and future member States – the Contractors involved are listed at the end of this Executive Summary . Their collective expertise and resources have been forged into an ambitious Joint Programme of Activities to restructure the field. Towards this end, four thematic S&T Clusters were originally defined, with a fifth for horizontal activities to provide an enhanced infrastructure and promote collaborative working in the Joint Programme of Activities. Following a mid-term review of the Project, 6 new Strategic Priorities (several crossing pre-existing Clusters) have been identified for the remainder of the Contract, and for which a new Cluster (6) has now been created.

For 'work-package 17' we are collaborating with the Wellcome Trust (weblink) to run micro-arrays. More information can be found in this news item: link