The Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) committed funding to more than 20 bi- and multilateral projects via its INTER scheme in 2017 to foster international cooperation. LIH was among the successful applicants for bilateral funding by the FNR and the German Research Foundation ”Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” (DFG) for a research project studying extracellular vesicles in B cell lymphoma.

As part of their INTER program, the FNR has a bilateral agreement with the DFG that aims to strengthen partnerships between scientists in Luxembourg and Germany. FNR committed to contribute with 579,000 Euros to a research project submitted by Dr Etienne Moussay, leading the “Tumour-Stroma Interaction” research group within the Laboratory of Experimental Cancer Research in LIH’s Department of Oncology. The project entitled “Extracellular vesicle RNA as systemic modulators of the tumour microenvironment in B cell lymphoma” has just started in January 2018 and will be carried out in collaboration with the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and the University of Ulm.

Extracellular vesicles are important mediators of intercellular communication and are thereby involved in many physiological and pathological processes. This project, focussing on B cell lymphoma, a non-curable blood cancer, aims to analyse the content of extracellular vesicles, in particular their RNA mixture. “We hope to be able to characterise extracellular vesicles in depth and shed light on how they influence the tumour microenvironment and impact on disease development”, tells project leader Dr Moussay.