Primary and secondary bone tumours affect patients from children to the elderly. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, bone tumours are incurable and thus, new therapies are needed.

In the bone microenvironment, cancer cells disrupt the physiological balance between bone forming osteoblasts, bone resorbing osteoclasts, and immune cells, leading to excessive osteoclast-mediated bone destruction. Besides standard treatments, including chemo- and radiation therapy and bone-targeted anti-resorptive therapies, immunotherapies have been studied in bone cancers. However, targeting of immune cells largely depends on the local microenvironment, that in bone is immunosuppressive, rendering patients with bone tumours less responsive to current immunotherapies.

The goal of the IMMOSCAN consortium is to uncover novel bone cell subpopulations that exert immunomodulatory functions and explore their potential use as novel targets in primary and metastatic bone cancers. The IMMOSCAN consortium combines the complementary and interdisciplinary strengths of five partners that bring together the latest imaging and sequencing techniques, cell- and molecular biology approaches, state-of-the-art pre-clinical models as well as patient samples to ensure the clinical relevance of the project. The findings of the project are expected to increase our understanding of the complex bone-cancer microenvironment and identify novel targetable pathways for innovative immune therapy in bone cancers.