Resurrecting ancestral sugars: a molecular archaeology approach to immunotherapy

在过去的十年里，癌症的精确治疗发生了革命性的变化。首先通过靶向递送作为抗体缀合物的有效小分子药物，随后通过创新的癌症免疫治疗策略，该策略利用患者自身的免疫系统来对抗癌症。在这个项目中，我们的目标是利用这两个领域的定义策略的方面，使用化学糖生物学开发一个全新的“分子考古学”方法来癌症免疫治疗，通过复活祖先糖的生物合成途径，这将启动癌细胞的识别由免疫系统从“自我”到“非自我”的变化。我们将通过关注前列腺癌来验证这种方法，前列腺癌影响英国八分之一的男性。

In the last decade the precision treatment of cancer has been revolutionised. Firstly by targeted delivery of potent small molecule drugs as antibody conjugates, and subsequently by innovative cancer immunotherapy strategies which coopt the patient's own immune system to fight the cancer. In this project we aim to harness aspects of both these field defining strategies, using chemical glycobiology to develop a completely novel 'molecular archaeology' approach to cancer immunotherapy, by resurrecting the biosynthetic pathway of an ancestral sugar which would initiate a change in the recognition of a cancer cell by the immune system from 'self' to 'non-self'. We will validate this approach by focussing on prostate cancer, which affects 1 in 8 men in the UK.