Project details

The heterogeneity of brain tumours and antigen escape from single targeted therapies are a significant obstacle to the response and long-term remission of patient malignancies following Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy. Therefore, to improve solid tumour elimination and prevent relapse, CAR T-cell immunotherapy may be improved by the multi-targeting of tumour-associated antigens and used in combination approaches.  

We have generated several in vitro tools and in vivo models to study multi-targeted immunotherapy for brain tumours. This project will investigate multi-targeted CAR T cell responses in immunocompetent in vivo models of brain cancer so that we can identify safe and efficacious therapies to translate into the clinic.  

Reference

Abbott et al Jenkins 2021 Clin Trans Immunol. May 9;10(5):e1283. 

About our research group

The Jenkins lab is dedicated to using immunotherapy approaches for the treatment of both adult and paediatric brain tumours. We work closely with clinical collaborators to find new immunooncology targets, and then we can rapidly generate novel chimeric antigen receptor T cells. We have all the necessary in vitro tools established to evaluate T cell function and immunocompetent in vivo models of brain cancer established to investigate the impacts of our therapies on tumour regression.  

We are interested in studying the generation, behaviour and efficacy of activated T cells for the purposes of immunotherapy. We also use state of the art microscopy techniques including lattice light sheet confocal and 2-photon microscopy to visualise T cell function in and around brain tumours and an interest in the tumour microenvironment.