Interdisciplinary Initiatives Program Round 12 - 2024
Project Investigators:
Michael Bassik, Genetics
Livnat Jerby, Genetics
Ansuman Satpathy, Pathology
Abstract:
Immunotherapy has had undeniable success across a multitude of cancer types, with some patients achieving long-term remission. However, a large fraction of patients do not benefit from immunotherapy. Poor response to immunotherapy has been associated with inadequate immune cell infiltration or high levels of immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment. Deep understanding of the mechanisms behind these phenotypes has been hampered in part by the complexity of the interactions between different cell types in the tumor microenvironment, and a lack of non-toxic tools capable of targeting specific cell types to study these interactions. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the creation of new methods to rapidly perturb and measure tumor-immune interactions. In this project, we propose to develop new virus-like particles for the precise perturbation and monitoring of immune cells in the tumor microenvironment. Using these tools, we plan to discover genetic factors on both immune cells and cancer cells that influence immune cell migration and activation into anti-tumor cell states. Completion of this project will nominate new therapeutic targets that synergize with existing immunotherapies or lead to the development of novel immunotherapies.
