Name: Sara Suárez Hernández
Project Title: Neoepitope recognition in cancer mice models
Group: T cells and cancer
Supervisors: Sine Reker Hadrup
Project Description:
Neoepitopes arise from mutation events occurring during cancer development, serving as tags for the immune system to distinguish cancer cells from the healthy tissue. Currently, artificial neural networks allow highly accurate predictions of neoepitopes from genetic material of ongoing tumors or cancer cell lines. However, they fail to distinguish which neoepitopes will be ultimately recognized by T cells and drive a potent anti-tumor response. Cancer murine models allow us to study the tumor-regression capacity of the predicted candidates to understand the characteristics of immunogenic neoepitopes.
Perspective:
Elucidating the implication of the immune system in cancer has paved the way towards the development of immune therapies, which make use of the body´s own immune system to fight cancer. Utilizing immunogenic neoepitopes as targets of therapeutic vaccines, will allow the development of fully specific and personalized cancer therapies.