DIPITO: valorisation of deep immune profiling and novel immunotherapeutics for oncology.

The Leuven Cancer Institute (LKI) has excellent research lines in tumor immunology, but few discoveries find their way into clinical studies and applications for patients. The strength of our immuno-oncological research is the result of 3 very favorable factors: 1) multidisciplinary collaboration of basic researchers and clinicians in so-called focus groups, 2) a very complete technological set-up for deep immune profiling of the tumor micro-environment and the blood, 3) the well developed KU Leuven set-up for the identification/validation of immunotherapeutic targets and the subsequent development of immunotherapeutics.Despite this wealth, the transition from preclinical to clinical research is struggling with some obstacles (a well-known problem, also in other cancer centers). The IOF manager in this proposal will be deployed to better translate the wealth of our research into useful applications for the cancer patient. This will be done through actions in a number of areas such as 1) assisting the focus groups in developing a valorization strategy, 2) increasing the biotech/pharma connections of the focus groups, the deep immunoprofiling platform, and our immunotherapeutics set-up and 3) increasing the involvement and success rate of the focus groups and the research platforms in valorization project applications.

Keywords:cancer, immunotherapy, tumor immunology, advanced disease models, Phase 0 clinical research

Disciplines:Cancer biology, Cancer therapy