Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Immunotherapy, a biological therapy that utilizes the immune system to fight disease, has emerged in the last few years as a major player in the field of cancer treatment. The effect of immunotherapy depends largely on the action of white blood cells with powerful tumour-killing capabilities, called T cells. Novel approaches are currently being explored to enhance T cell function and improve responses to immunotherapy in hard-to-treat cancers. One such approach is the engineering of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells, wherein patient T cells are extracted, modified with a receptor that enables them to better recognize tumour cells, and then re-infused in large numbers. CAR-T cell therapy has demonstrated remarkable success in blood-based cancers, but in solid tumours, physical and functional barriers pose a unique challenge. In particular, rapidly growing tumour cells produce toxic metabolites and consume large amounts of glucose and oxygen, creating a hostile environment that inhibits immune cells. It is the goal of my research to find a new way to overcome this suppression and improve CAR-T cell therapy for solid tumours. To achieve this goal, I am designing the world’s first metabolic engineering platform for cancer immunotherapy. Working within the context of ovarian cancer, I will use sophisticated gene-editing techniques to produce supercharged CAR-T cells with enhanced metabolic and tumour-killing capabilities. Rigorous testing and optimization in the laboratory and in mouse models will enable me to deliver a successful metabolic engineering platform with the potential to finally advance CAR-T cell therapy in solid cancers.