We are thrilled to announce that our latest case report has been published in Frontiers in Immunology journal!
In this paper, we inform about a case of pancreatic cancer with liver metastasis that exhibited a positive immune response to personalized immunization therapy. We believe that our findings will underscores the potential benefits of personalized peptide-based immunization as an adjunctive therapy in the treatment of advanced pancreatic cancer, showcasing promising outcomes in tumor marker reduction, tumor shrinkage, and enhanced patient well-being.
A huge thank you to everyone who supported us along the way.
Cancer neoantigens arising from somatic mutations have emerged as important targets for personalized immunization. Here we report improved overall survival of a HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patient using a personalized peptide immunization called BiTAP (Bioinformatic Therapy Address Peptides). Epitopes were predicted using our in-house bioinformatics pipeline and immunogenicity was tested using IFN-γ-ELISPOT and intracellular cytokine staining assays. Overall, a significant peptide-specific T-cell response was detected against 18 of the 76 (≈24%) peptides tested. Follow-up of the patient by measuring serological markers showed a significant reduction in tumor marker levels after BiTAP immunization. In addition to standard treatment, patients treated with BiTAP showed a stable disease course with a remarkable improvement in overall survival and no serious treatment-related adverse effects. Our results suggest that BiTAP immunization is feasible and safe and can lead to tumor regression in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer subsets.
IMMUNEO Therapeutics announces collaboration with Fraunhofer Institute to advance knowledge of the efficacy and pharmacology of BITAP and PAN-BITAP peptides using 3D tumor models
Supervision: Maximiliane Wußmann (TLZ, Fraunhofer), Prof. Dr. Gudrun Dandekar (TERM, UKW). Team: Sanjana Matthäus-Schmitt, Sarah Nietzer
Employees: Dr. Niklas Beyersdorf, Institute of Virology and Immunobiology, Universität Würzburg
Master student: Jonathan Matsch (Biochemie – Masterarbeit)
Under a new law signed at the end of December 2022, new drugs will no longer need to be tested on animals to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although non-animal technologies are still in their infancy and may not replace animal models anytime soon, as the FDA still has wide discretion to require animal testing, organ chip and 3D tissue technologies are already being used commercially and show promising equivalence to animal models.
Such chips typically consist of hollow channels embedded in silicone-based polymers and are about the size of a computer thumb drive. The channels are lined with living cells and tissues from organs such as the brain, liver, lungs and kidneys. Fluids flow through them to simulate blood flowing through tiny vessels and fluid flowing through tissue as it does in living organs. In the body, drug damage often shows up in the liver because it breaks down drugs for excretion. A human liver chip can warn of such toxicity if an experimental drug pumped through it damages the cells.
Despite the complexity of tumor tissues due to their TME in humans, the group of Prof. Dr. Gudrun Dandekar, head of the Department of Infection and Tumor Biology Processes at the Fraunhofer Institute, University of Würzburg, has succeeded in immunohistochemically staining a 3D lung tumor model with integrated environment (stroma) after dynamic culture in a bioreactor on a biological tissue matrix (SIS). The tumor models were used and funded together with the systems biology in silico analysis over three years in the BMBF joint project Remis 3R as an alternative to animal experiments. In addition, these tissue models have already led to the concrete replacement of animal testing, as high-ranking publications in the field of general drug testing and CAR-T cell testing show.
This collaboration, initiated in March 2023, will open the field for a better understanding of the pharmacology, efficacy and safety of BITAP and PAN-BITAP in various tumor entities.
https://www.ukw.de/forschung-lehre/lehrstuhl-fuer-tissue-engineering-und-regenerative-medizin-term/forschung/infektions-und-tumorbiologische-prozesse