Investigating anti-tumour T cell responses in nasopharyngeal carcinoma to refine vaccine-based immunotherapies

研究鼻咽癌的抗肿瘤 T 细胞反应以完善基于疫苗的免疫疗法

• 批准号: MR/P013201/1
• 负责人: Paul Murray
• 金额: $ 24.89万
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR%2FP013201%2F1
• 关键词: Investigating; anti; tumour; cell; responses

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a type of cancer that occurs at the back of the nose. It is unusually common in some parts of the world, including countries like Malaysia where it constitutes a very significant health problem. NPC can be cured, but in many cases the cancer comes back and this is usually fatal. Furthermore, patients who do survive are often left with significant long-term side effects caused by the toxic treatments. Therefore, new treatments are needed to reduce deaths from NPC and improve the quality of life for survivors. All patients with NPC have a virus, known as the Epstein-Barr virus, or EBV for short, in their tumour cells. We have developed a vaccine that can recognise EBV with the aim of boosting the patients' own immune response to the tumour. Early tests of our vaccine in people show that it is safe and that it can boost immunity against the virus. In this proposal we want to understand more about immunity to EBV in patients with NPC so that we can modify how we deliver our vaccine and eventually combine it with other drugs to improve its therapeutic effects. To do this we will be using new sequencing technologies to probe how patient's T cells, the body's main weapon against virus-infected cells, respond to EBV, for example before and after treatment, enabling us to 'track' individual T cell responses over time. At the same time, we will explore the nature of potential inhibitory pathways present in the tumour so that we might eventually target these in combination with our vaccine making it more effective.

鼻咽癌（NPC）是鼻子后部发生的一种癌症。它在世界某些地区非常普遍，包括像马来西亚这样构成非常重大健康问题的国家。 NPC可以治愈，但是在许多情况下，癌症会恢复，这通常是致命的。此外，生存的患者通常会受到由有毒疗法引起的重大长期副作用。因此，需要新的治疗方法来减少NPC的死亡并改善幸存者的生活质量。所有NPC患者均具有病毒，称为Epstein-Barr病毒，或者在其肿瘤细胞中简称EBV。我们开发了一种可以识别EBV的疫苗，目的是增强患者对肿瘤的免疫反应。我们在人们中对疫苗的早期测试表明，它是安全的，并且可以增强对病毒的免疫力。在此提案中，我们希望更多地了解NPC患者对EBV的免疫力，以便我们可以修改如何输送疫苗，并最终将其与其他药物结合起来，以改善其治疗作用。为此，我们将使用新的测序技术来探测患者的T细胞（人体对病毒感染细胞的主要武器）如何对EBV做出反应，例如在治疗前后，使我们能够随着时间的推移“跟踪”单个T细胞反应。同时，我们将探索肿瘤中存在的潜在抑制途径的性质，以便最终可以将其与疫苗结合起来，从而使其更有效。