Team:Evry/Project/Induction

Inducing cancer immunity

Today, the probability for a french couple to get at least one cancer is 66 %. Through the world, there were 14,1 billion of new cancer cases in 2012, with a death toll of 8.2 million this year.

Immunotherapies are considered as top strategies to fight cancer. However, it remains out of reach of most patients because of high costs and lack of tumor specificity. Today, active immunotherapies are based on a very laborious process : extraction of patient dendritic cells precursors, followed by a long maturation, then in vitro vaccination of these cells and finally their re-injection in the patient.

We are engineering an innovative and promising approach to make this whole process more efficient and low-cost, using in vivo targeting of dendritic cells. This approach relies on the use of the antibody DEC205, a well-known antibody that targets the cross-presentation pathway of dendritic cells. To improve its potency, we are designing the yeast S. Cerevisiae to display DEC205 on its surface. The binding of this antibody to the dendritic cell will induce phagocytosis of the yeast. The yeast produces specific tumor antigens that bind to MHC I and II complex. The cross-presentation will induce vaccination of the dendritic cell and elicit a potent CD8+ and CD4+ immune response against the targeted tumor antigen.

To top