Mac4Me Project Kicks off in Rotterdam

Mac4Me project kicks off with a meeting in Rotterdam and the first doctoral training session

PeptiMatrix is proud to be a partner in Mac4Me (Macrophage Targets for Metastatic Treatment), a major Horizon Europe MSCA Doctoral Network that officially launched with its kick-off meeting in Rotterdam on 25 and 26 June 2025. The event, hosted by Erasmus University Medical Center (project coordinator), brought together the consortium’s core members to align research goals and set the direction for the next four years.

Mac4Me is focused on three cancer types: neuroblastoma, breast cancer and prostate cancer. These cancers are often resistant to current therapies and tend to spread to the brain, liver and bone. The project aims to improve understanding of how tumour cells invade healthy tissues and to support the development of new therapeutic approaches.

As a partner to the project, PeptiMatrix is providing hydrogel-based 3D culture technology to support the creation of human-relevant models that mimic tissue environments affected by metastasis. A central part of our involvement is supporting early-stage researchers in this area.

Ahead of the official launch, the first training session for Mac4Me’s doctoral candidates took place from 23 to 25 June. This marked the beginning of a carefully structured training programme designed to develop not only scientific capability but also professional and personal growth. The curriculum included in-depth sessions on clinical aspects of the three cancers, technical skills such as single-cell mechanics and organ-on-chip models, and core biological topics including tumour formation, immune evasion and DNA repair deficiency.

The training also included a creative communications activity, where each doctoral candidate was featured in an introductory video produced for the Mac4Me website. With nearly all candidates and principal investigators meeting in person for the first time, the event fostered genuine connections, team cohesion and momentum across the project's various subgroups.

We were especially pleased to meet our Doctoral Candidate, Elena Montero Bragado, in person for the first time during event. Elena brings a strong academic and technical background, holding degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Barcelona and Materials Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Before joining PeptiMatrix, she worked as a Project Engineer at ROVI Pharmaceutical Company, where she focused on developing and optimising pharmaceutical manufacturing processes.

Elena has now joined PeptiMatrix as a Postgraduate Researcher and is enrolled as a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Nottingham. Her project within Mac4Me will focus on developing a human-relevant liver model using PeptiMatrix hydrogel technology, supporting research into how metastatic cells colonise liver tissue.

Mac4Me brings together a wide-reaching network of 14 core partners and 11 associated partners from across Europe and beyond. Participants include universities, companies, patient organisations, scientific associations and foundations based in Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as Australia and the United States. The partnership spans disciplines such as biomedical engineering, basic science, translational research, computational biology and the social sciences.

With this first gathering of candidates and principal investigators setting a strong collaborative tone for the project, PeptiMatrix is proud and excited to support this forward-looking research programme and looks forward to contributing to new discoveries in metastatic cancer biology.

Learn more at: https://mac4me.eu

Follow Mac4Me on LinkedIn and BlueSky

For media enquiries: mac4me@upf.edu