Imaging immune-tumour interactions in cancer for uncovering novel strategies to improve the efficacy of immunotherapies

James Arnold (primary)
Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences
King's College London
Simon Ameer-Beg (secondary)
Cancer and Pharmaceutical Sciences
King's College London

Abstract

Immune checkpoint therapies such as anti-PD-1 and -CTLA-4 have resulted in unprecedented responses, even cures, for some patients with late-stage cancer. However, the majority of patients fail to respond to such therapies. This study will focus on utilising cutting-edge imaging techniques to study the T cell-tumour cell interaction in vitro and in vivo using models of cancer to further understand how T-cells target and kill tumour cells. The aim is to identify and explore novel therapeutic opportunities to improve the efficacy of anti-tumour immune responses.


References

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2 Muliaditan, T., Caron, J., Okesola, M., Opzoomer, J.W., Kosti, P., Georgouli, M., Gordon, P., Lall, S., Kuzeva, D.M., Pedro, L., Shields, J.D., Gillett, C.E., Diebold, S.S., Sanz-Moreno, V., Ng, T., Hoste, E. and Arnold, J.N. (2018) Macrophages are exploited from an innate wound healing response to facilitate metastases in cancer. Nature Communications, 9:2951.

3 Levitt, J. A., Poland, S. P., Krstajic, N., Pfisterer, K., Erdogan, A., Barber, P.R., Parsons, M., Henderson, R. K., Ameer-Beg, S.M., Quantitative real-time imaging of intracellular FRET biosensor dynamics using rapid multi-beam confocal FLIM. Sci Rep 10, 5146 (2020).

4 Pfisterer, K., Levitt, J. A., Lawson, C. D., Marsh, R. J., Heddleston, J. M., Wait, E., Ameer-Beg, S.M., Cox, S., Parsons, M., (2020) FMNL2 regulates dynamics of fascin in filopodia, J Cell Biol 2020; 219 (5): e201906111. DOI: 10.1083/jcb.201906111.


BBSRC Area
Molecules, cells and industrial biotechnology
Area of Biology
Cell BiologyImmunology
Techniques & Approaches
BiochemistryBiophysicsImage ProcessingMicroscopy / ElectrophysiologyMolecular Biology