Funded Grants

SEED GRANT

Grantee: MD Anderson Cancer Center
Project Lead: Sachet Shukla, PHD
Grant Title: Identification of non-canonical antigens of development of novel immunotherapies in Glioblastoma
Program Area: Glioblastoma
Grant Type: UKF Seed Grant
Year Awarded: 2023
Amount: $50,000
Duration: 1 year

Summary: Immunotherapies belong to a category of treatments that activate a patient's own immune system to target their cancer cells. However, their effectiveness is limited to only a small subgroup of glioblastoma (GBM) patients. T cells play a crucial role in launching an effective immune response against tumors by recognizing "antigens," which are small protein fragments produced due to DNA or RNA changes within cancer cells. Therefore, it is essential to accurately and comprehensively identify these DNA and RNAalterations in GBM to discover new antigens suitable for developing safe and efficient immunotherapies. Typically, commercially available molecular tests focus on short-read sequencing methods and identify salterations in protein-coding regions of the genome, known as "canonical" antigens. However, these regions make up only a tiny fraction (0.3%) of the entire genome. Other alterations in cancer cells, such as structural DNA changes or the expression of abnormal RNA molecules, can impact the entire genome, giving rise to a substantial number of relevant "non-canonical" antigens. Advanced third-generation long-read sequencing technologies, in combination with other molecular profiling and computational methods, have the potential to be highly effective in discovering these new non-canonical antigens. Surprisingly, these approaches have not been applied to GBM research so far, representing an untapped opportunity to identify new immunological targets for therapy. Therefore, our primary goal in this study is to employstate-of-the-art long-read sequencing on GBM samples to comprehensively identify non-canonical antigens. This effort will drive the development of innovative immunotherapies for GBM.