Deep multi-omics dissection of the CD8+T-cell immune-landscape in colorectal cancer (CRC) to reveal tumor-specific vs. microbial immune- drivers for immuno-oncological application

The main goal of this project is to comprehensively delineate novel, unanticipated, quantitative and qualitative features of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients’ CD8+T-cells, responding to both tumoral antigens or gut microbiome depending on CRC tumor-subtypes, and differentially modulating immunotherapy-response. With this project I will 1) Characterize the functional signaling drivers of CD8+T-cells activation and potential impact on CRC patient response to immunotherapy; 2) Explore TCR annotation associated with immune cell activation and effector inflammatory pathways; 3) Characterize tumor-antigenic/microbiome associations with immune activation responses in CRC patients; 4) Delineate prognostic machine learning-classifiers of CRC response rates to different immunotherapies. We will integrate these characteristics to create uniform patient immuno-stratification classifiers informing rational designs of clinical trials with novel anti-CRC immunotherapy approaches.