The nervous system and cancer

Nerves mediate the homeostasis of normal tissues, and this is disrupted in neoplasia where the nervous system promotes cancer pathogenesis, therapeutic resistance, pain syndromes and psychological dysfunction. In response to signals released by tumours, peripheral nerves arborize and bidirectionally communicate with them to promote cancer progression and immune dysfunction. Beyond cancer, evidence suggests that Parkinson's disease may initiate in the gut and impact the brain via the vagus nerve. Despite these insights, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain poorly defined.

This challenge aims to define bidirectional signalling between tumours and the peripheral and central nervous systems that promote cancer progression. These findings will yield new biological mechanisms that could underpin therapeutic intervention and improve patient outcomes.

The role of nerves in cancer biology remains poorly understood, presenting an opportunity to bridge oncology and neuroscience. Neuronal contributions to cancer may be underestimated due to the difficulty of detecting nerves within tumour tissue. Addressing this challenge will require innovative approaches to investigate nerve-tumour interactions with precision.

This challenge will explore whether nerves actively drive cancer pathogenesis, influence immune recognition or the systemic effects of cancer and therapeutic response. This could include the potential role of nerves as sanctuary sites for neoplastic cells or pathways for metastatic spread. Investigating how nerves mediate these cancer-associated factors could provide crucial mechanistic insights.

Applications are strongly encouraged from teams which bring together expertise in neuroscience with cancer biology and immunology to explore interactions between the nervous system and a broad range of tumours across the body, beyond neural tumours or those confined to the nervous system.

The nervous system, made up of our brain and nerves, plays a key role in maintaining the health of our tissues. Growing evidence now suggests that it may also influence how cancer develops and spreads. Signals sent between nerves and tumours can help cancer grow, change how the immune system recognises cancer, and make treatments less effective. However, we still don’t fully understand how nerves and cancer cells communicate. We also don’t know how this interaction affects cancer progression.

This Cancer Grand Challenge aims to identify how nerves, the brain and cancer influence each other. By understanding how they communicate, researchers may identify new ways to treat cancer more effectively. This could include stopping cancer from using nerves as pathways to spread or finding new targets for therapies that block nerve signals which help cancer grow. Understanding these connections could lead to new ways to fight cancer and improve patient outcomes.