Immunotherapy: Boosting the Immune System to Fight Cancer

Our cancer immunotherapy focuses on utilizing both the innate and the adaptive immune system branches for better cancer therapy:
(1) In our innate immune system approach, we focus on macrophages, which play complex roles in the interaction with tumor. On one hand, M1-like macrophages (pro-inflammatory) recognize and phagocytose tumor cells, which tumor cells learned to escape through overexpression of macrophage immune checkpoint proteins (such as CD47). We focus on reversing the immune checkpoint inhibition to increase the phagocytotic properties of macrophages in the TME. On the other hand, M2-like macrophages (anti-inflammatory) which get programmed by tumor cells to support tumor cell progression (tumor associated macrophages - TAMS). We focus on re-programming TAMs from M2-like phenotype to M0 or M1, to prevent M2-like macrophage-induced tumor progression and drug resistance.

(2) In our innate immune system approach, we focus on T cells, which are instrumental in identifying and actively killing cancer cells through their cytotoxic activity. We use nanoparticles to solve biological and clinical problems in immunotherapy, such as development of nanoparticle based bispecific T cell engagers (NanoBTCE), which solve the problem of short pharmacokinetic profile of "classic BTCEs), or development of nanoparticle-based multi-specific T cell engagers (NanoMuTEs) that solve the problem of antigen-less tumor escape due to targeting only one cancer antigen in immunotherapy.