Sarcoma UK research collaboration

Awarded in partnership with Sarcoma UK 

Funds awarded: £99,914.98

Research will be undertaken at Birmingham University

About the project

Childhood sarcomas represent a large and mixed group of cancers affecting areas such as bone, muscle, and the layers of cells between our organs. Sarcoma is sometimes curable by surgery (about 20% of the time), or by surgery with chemotherapy and/or radiation (another 50-55%), but about half the time they are totally resistant to all these approaches, thus the urgent need for new therapeutic treatments.

An immunotherapy approach, which activates the patient’s own immune system to attack and kill cancer cells, has shown impressive clinical results in blood cancers. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to translate these successes to other types of cancers, particularly solid tumours such as sarcomas. This may be because the solid tumours generate a hostile environment that switches off the anti-tumour immune response. This hostile environment includes Myeloid Derived Suppressor Cells (MDSCs), which are responsible for switching off the immune response in several types of sarcomas.

In this project, we will test the ability to activate key immune cells (iNKT) which have the function of inhibiting MDSCs and allowing the immune system to target and kill childhood sarcoma. Moreover, iNKT cells have a superior ability to penetrate tissue and directly induce cell death in tumour cells. We are fortunate to have an active group of patients at Birmingham Children’s Hospital who would donate blood samples to this ethically approved project. Using these samples, we will study the interaction between immune cells and childhood sarcomas. The results of this project will determine whether iNKT cells immunity is clinically relevant in sarcoma patients and provide the scientific basis for the design of an early phase clinical trial based on the activation of iNKT cells in children with sarcoma. INKT cell therapy approaches are having a resurgence in clinical trials for adult solid cancers with a number of companies investing already in Phase I/II clinical trials.