Immunotherapy using antibodies targeting tumors has led to important clinical advances, yet only 15-20% of all cancer patients respond to immunotherapy. Thus, there is urgent need to increase the efficacy for immunotherapies and enhance anti-tumor responses. This is exemplified by hematological malignancies including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) and multiple myeloma (MM), two common and aggressive cancers, which are still incurable in 40-50% of patients. These patients have poor prognosis due to treatment failure or relapse upon therapy with therapeutic antibodies (377,000 mortalities worldwide in 2020).
The solution? A more effective immunotherapy that uses a novel platform to induce potent tumor cytotoxicity by clustering membrane targets and dual targeting. Within this Biotech Booster project, we will develop a new therapeutic platform that enables multivalent tumor targeting, scalable manufacturing (off-the-shelf) and multipurpose platform technology (applicable to different cancer types).
The impact and societal relevance the Dual Tumor Targeting projectteam are creating with this invention are:
1. Development of a powerful novel immunotherapy for patients with DLBCL/MM
2. Improved tumor killing by clustering of targets
3. Prevent resistance by dual targeting of two membrane targets at the same time.
4. Broadly applicable treatment approach, as targeting of membrane proteins is independent from genetic heterogeneity among cancer subtypes.
