Characterisation of novel cancer antigens for immunotherapy
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Antigen discovery and characterisation for the development of multi-modal cancer immunotherapies.
IRAS ID
262868
Contact name
Joseph Dukes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Enara Bio Ltd
Duration of Study in the UK
5 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Recent advances in immunotherapy have confirmed that the immune system can specifically recognise and eliminate cancer cells when given appropriate stimulation. The recognition of a cancer cell by the body’s immune system is due to the presence of unique molecules presented on the surface of cancer cells that are not found on cells making up the rest of the body. These unique molecules are derived from regions of the cell’s DNA that become aberrantly expressed in cancer.
Enara Bio have developed an informatic pipeline to identify these aberrantly expressed regions of DNA, and they are developing a platform of immunotherapies that will allow the body’s immune system to target cancer cells using these as targets.
Importantly, the discoveries that Enara Bio have made to date are limited to publicly available data profiling cancer at the level of gene expression, which is only predictive of the molecules that may be presented on the surface of cancer cells.To test whether these predictions extend to the level of unique molecular targets being presented on the surface of cancer cells, Enara Bio have designed a high-resolution mass-spectrometry workflow that specifically isolates and identifies those molecules on the surface of cells in fresh/frozen patient tumour samples. As a key downstream step, Enara Bio will test the ability of these unique molecules to raise an appropriate immune response in blood samples treated in vitro with these same molecules.
REC name
North West - Haydock Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
19/NW/0216
Date of REC Opinion
18 Apr 2019
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion