Project description
The key to unlock your immune response to cancer may be on the horizon
Cancer immunotherapy harnesses a person's immune system to fight cancer either by stimulating the patient's own immune system or by providing man-made immune system components. It was voted 'breakthrough of the year’ by Science magazine in 2013. However, despite its potential, patient response rates vary and often only a small portion respond favourably to a given treatment. Personalised cancer immunotherapy could unlock the potential but current methods are expensive and time-consuming. PeptiCHIP has developed a system to identify and purify patient-specific neoantigens (newly formed antigens that have not been previously recognised by the immune system) quickly and easily. EU funding is helping partners establish the business to make it available to millions of patients worldwide.
Objective
Immunotherapeutic strategies have emerged as powerful tools to treat many types of cancers. However, the majority of patients still fails to respond to immunotherapies as targetable tumour characteristics vary from patient to patient. Thus, a greater degree of personalisation is required to fine-tune immunotherapies to the specific vulnerabilities of each patient’s tumour. While therapies that target tumour-specific antigens (neoantigens) invoke a strong and specific anti-tumour immune response, we are currently unable to accurately identify patient-specific neoantigens. Current neoantigen identification and purification methods either require impractically large quantities of tumour material or are laborious, expensive, time-consuming (weeks or months) and inaccurate. As part of ERC project PEPTICRAD (2016-2021), Prof. Vincenzo Cerullo at the University of Helsinki has developed a novel microfluidic chip-based device (PeptiCHIP) which condenses the neoantigen purification steps into a single chip capable of accurately analysing minute quantities of human tumour tissue. PeptiCHIP permits cost-effective, rapid, sample-conserving, user-friendly, accurate and standardised tumour neoantigen identification, thereby unleashing the full potential of personalised anti-tumour immunotherapies. In this ERC PoC project, a team of technological and commercial experts will ascertain the technical and commercial viability of the innovative PeptiCHIP device. We will prepare the first steps toward the start-up of a spin-off by defining the most optimal business strategy and model. Furthermore, we will explore the technical potential of the PeptiCHIP and solidify our IP-position. We will develop a solid business strategy based on the technological aspects, the market needs and trends. Finally, during this project we will gain technical and commercial proof-of-concept, providing the necessary information for potential commercialisation routes.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-POC - Proof of Concept GrantHost institution
00014 Helsingin Yliopisto
Finland