Projects

Project leader: Dr. Vesna Vučić

Project collaborators: Dr. Danijela Ristić-Medić, Dr. Aleksandra Arsić, Dr. Maja Milošević, Dr. Snježana Petrović, Dr. Nebojša Ivanović, Dr. Biljana Pokimica, Dr. Anđelija Čukić, Dr. Marijana Kovačić

Project number: 5050

Duration of the project: December 1, 2023-December 1, 2026.

Leading institution: Institute for Medical Research, University of Belgrade

Collaborating institutions: Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade

Description of the project:

With 3700 new breast cancer (BRC) cases each year in Serbia, and 2.1 million globally, BRC is one of the biggest health challenges today. Available anticancer therapies have limited efficacy and are coupled with toxic side effects. Nutritional intervention can ameliorate undesirable effects, reduce exhaustion, psychological harm, and costs spent on treating these side effects.

The project AID aims to improve clinical outcome, quality of life (QoL) and survival rate in BRC patients on adjuvant endocrine therapy with aromatase inhibitors (AI) by nutritional interventions. In a three-arm randomised controlled nutritional trial involving 80 BRC patients who receive either supplement or placebo pills (control group), or an anti-inflammatory diet for 4 months, along with the AI therapy, changes in nutritional status, QoL, biochemical and clinical parameters аrе measured in comparison among three groups.

The second goal is to establish cause-and-effect relationships among the clinical outcomes, nutritional status and biochemical parameters related to cancer, including inflammatory and redox status, plasma lipidome and polymorphism of fatty acid desaturase (FADS) genes. The challenges are tackled by our research team which holds the expertise to accomplish the nutritional, clinical, and biochemical tasks of the project.

The project tends to go beyond the current state-of-the-art by implementing high-throughput lipidomic analyses in nutritional trials. This helps in building the research capacity of our team with the long-term goals toward the elucidation of the biochemical pathways by integration of machine learning and to the creation of the first lipidomic centre in Serbia. Introducing an effective nutritional intervention in BRC patients as an integral part of the multimodal therapeutic approach through this project will immediately have an outstanding impact for patients and their families, as well as for local and global economy in a long run.