2019 participants
Nikita Lewis
Cancer is a life threatening disease. Immunotherapy uses patient’s own immune system to control and eliminate cancer cells. Tumour usually has strongly immune suppressive tissue environment. One method in immunotherapy is to convert this immune suppressive type of environment in tumour to become immune stimulatory. The conventional thinking is to create an infection like response thus to alert the host immune system to be aware of the abnormal tissue. STmulator of INterferon Genes (STING) is a important component of cellular sensing mechanism for DNA virus and bacteria infection, thus injecting agents activating STING will promote local tissue inflammation to attract immune cells. It has been shown that injecting STING agonist into tumour controls tumour growth effectively in mouse models but this seems to be limited only when tumours are small. The project aim to understand resistant factors in immunotherapy using STING agonist.
Funding source: Newcastle University
Project supervisor: Dr Lei Huang