Photochemical Internalisation in intratumoural immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has in recent years revolutionized the treatment of several types of cancer. The principle of cancer immunotherapy is to activate the body’s own immune cells to attack cancer cells. In the best cases this gives long term treatment responses, and cure of the malignant disease. However, only a minority of cancer patients respond to immunotherapy, and one important reason for this is that tumours develop immunosuppressive mechanisms that will hinder immune cells from attacking the tumours. Thus, there is currently a great interest in exploring technologies for local tumour treatment that can alter tumour immunosuppressive microenvironments. PCI Biotech is developing a technology, photochemical internalisation (PCI), that can be used to develop new forms of tumour immunotherapies, both by having an immunostimulatory effects on its own, and by enhancing the effect of vaccines and immunostimulatory molecules injected in tumours. PCI has to potential both for initiating an immune response and for down-regulating immunosuppressive mechanisms in the treated tumour. In the best case the immune cells stimulated by the local PCI treatment can spread throughout the body and kill the cancer cells also in distant tumours. The objective of the project is to elucidate how intratumoural PCI treatments with vaccine antigens and immunostimulatory molecules affect the tumour microenvironment, and how such PCI treatments can be optimized for generating anti-tumour immune responses. Most of the work will be performed in animal tumour models where the amounts of tumour immune cells of different types will be analysed, and the effect of different treatment strategies on tumour growth will be assessed. If positive, the results in the project will be used for developing new local tumour immuno-therapeutic strategies that may be pursued further in clinical studies.

Immunotherapy has in recent years revolutionized the treatment of several types of cancer. The principle of cancer immunotherapy is to activate the body’s own immune cells to attack cancer cells. In the best cases this gives long term treatment responses, and cure of the malignant disease. However, only a minority of cancer patients respond to immunotherapy, and one important reason for this is that tumour microenvironment develops immunosuppressive mechanisms that will hinder immune cells from attacking the tumours. Thus, there is currently a great interest in exploring technologies for local tumour treatment that can alter tumour immunosuppressive microenvironments. PCI Biotech is developing a technology, photochemical internalisation (PCI), that can be used to develop new forms of tumour immunotherapies, both by having an immunostimulatory effects on its own, and by enhancing the effect of vaccines and immunostimulatory molecules injected in tumours. PCI has to potential both for stimulating initiation of an immune response and for down-regulating immunosuppressive mechanisms in the treated tumour. In the best case the immune cells stimulated by the local PCI treatment can spread throughout the body and kill the cancer cells also in distant tumours. The objective of the project is to elucidate how intratumoural PCI treatments with vaccine antigens and immunostimulatory molecules affect the tumour microenvironment, and how such PCI treatments can be optimized for generating anti-tumour immune responses. Most of the work will be performed in animal tumour models where effects will be investigated by analysing the amounts of tumour immune cells of different types, and their activation status. The effect of the treatments on tumour growth will also be monitored. If positive, the results in the project will be used for developing new local tumour immunotherapeutic strategies that may be pursued further in clinical studies.