Axis 4: Development of new innovative therapies from genomic data
Objectives
The objectives of this axis are to make use of the translational character of the Institute to promote leading-edge research to study the immunological mechanisms involved in the antitumor immune response, to identify biomarkers able to predict the efficacy of immunotherapy, to develop new immunological therapeutic strategies and clinical/therapeutic trials in partnership with pharmaceutical companies.
Methods
Several ambitious programs will be conducted in parallel to:
- improve the antitumor efficacy of certain classical cytotoxic chemotherapies by describing their immunological effect and by developing strategies that provide an optimal combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy,
- identify an immunological signature of the immune microenvironment of tumors, notably breast, central nervous system and gastrointestinal tumors, before and after treatment so as to determine the prognosis in patients and to envisage of supplementary therapeutic interventions (chemotherapy or immunotherapy) for patients with a high risk of relapse, by developing specialized quantitative and qualitative analyses of the immune microenvironment of tumors thanks to detailed studies of the phenotype and functional characteristics of cells of the microenvironment,
- identify biomarkers of immunogenic cell death in cancer by using immunohistochemistry techniques, combined with genomic studies, in order to identify early patients with non-immunogenic tumors, so as to propose compensatory chemotherapy to these patients,
- identify one or an association of biomarkers able to predict the efficacy of immunotherapy with anti-PD1 monoclonal antibodies, by developing a novel approach that combines studies of the immune response in situ in the tumor (histological approaches using multiplex marking) with studies of the peripheral immunre response in the patient’s blood and a study of the tumor exome as well as the tumor transcriptome,
- identify the molecular signaling pathways that modulate interactions between the tumor and the host via the action of Natural Killer cells on tumor cells, as well as their modification by using certain antitumor drugs, notably inhibitors of the mTOR pathway,
- identify tumor antigens that foster the antitumoral response of T CD4+ cells, so as to develop targeted therapies,
- develop new immunological therapeutic strategies, by developing different research projects to evaluate of immunomodulation, vaccination, gene therapy or cell therapy
This axis will position the Institute as an organization involved in leading-edge research, oriented towards genomic medicine and immunotherapy.
