Cancer remains a major cause of death despite the phenomenal progress in current immunotherapy. This kind of treatment aims to boost host immune response relying on specificity of antibodies and T cells, and their ability to distinguish between cancer and normal cells. The three main cancer immunotherapies are cellular therapeutics, immune checkpoint blockade and therapeutic cancer vaccines, but those have only limited success, mainly due to difficulties in identifying target antigens. Carbohydrate chains (glycans) ubiquitously occupy the surface of cells, but cancer cells express aberrant glycans. The presentation mode of glycans and their heterogeneity affect their immune recognition, but the fundamental understanding of how these factors contribute to efficient cancer therapy in vivo has not been defined systematically. The primary objective of this proposal is to design a comprehensive novel cancer immunotherapy approach targeting glycan-neoantigens. We use an innovative interdisciplinary approach that integrates glycobiology, immunology, biochemistry, nanotechnology, with cutting-edge technologies, to design and fully investigate new frontiers in cancer ‘GlycoTherapy’ in vivo. Our discovery line is aimed to yield valuable translational tools and knowledge in diverse research fields. Successful comprehensive understanding of glyco-immunotherapy will provide a platform to design, generate and validate potent novel cancer theranostics that would fit treatment in humans. It employs established systems side-by-side with state-of-the-art technologies, including glycan microarrays.
