Cancer tailored next generation cellular therapies

Introduction

Cellular therapies are commonly used to treat hematological cancers but have yet to be established in solid oncology. Their evolution has been fueled by hypotheses derived from cell biological observations in cancer models. Most approaches, however, will either never enter clinical development or fail clinical testing, often due to inadequate models of disease and their lack of relevance to human biology.

Project Overview

In CATACLIS, I propose the first unbiased development of cellular products based on patient characteristics in order to address this enormous translational gap and ultimately provide more effective cell therapies to patients with solid cancers. CATACLIS will herald a paradigm shift in cell therapy by reversing conventional model-to-patient innovation ("forward translation") to patient-generated ideas tested in patient-derived models into clinical trials ("reverse translation").

Research Goals

I have discovered novel approaches to improve T cell function, which resulted in a clinical trial and established me as a leader in the field of cellular therapies. The challenge I will now face is to move beyond model bias and integrate cancer heterogeneity across patients and entities.

In CATACLIS, I will use single-cell data sets from patients to inform the design of next-generation cellular therapies capable of overcoming current limitations in solid cancers, namely:

1. Access to tumor tissue
2. Target antigen(s) selection
3. Immune suppression

Methodology

To maximize clinical relevance, CATACLIS will use patient-derived materials from hypothesis generation to in vivo testing. This will enable me to create cellular products tailored to the patient's cancer.

Expected Outcomes

My research will not only result in novel cellular products for further testing and development toward clinical trials, but it will also serve as a resource for the development of innovative therapies based on patient data, contribute to the European open science objectives, and reduce the burden of animal experimentation.