Abstract

My laboratory is interested in defining and targeting the key pathways regulating immune recognition and destruction of cancerous cells within tumours. In recent years, a number of publications have demonstrated the essential role of the tumour microenvironment in the in vivo activity of checkpoint targeting antibodies. In this talk I will discuss novel developments in this area relating to the mechanism of action and the development of immune modulatory antibodies that promote maximal modulatory activity in different tumour microenvironments.  In addition to immune regulation, another key area of research in the field of cancer immunology relates to the recognition of tumour cells by T lymphocytes. Whilst recent studies highlight the potential importance of T cell reactivity towards patient-specific mutant epitopes in the successful outcome of immune modulatory therapies, little is know about the impact of intra-tumour heterogeneity (ITH) on this relation.  In the second part of this talk I will describe recent data using multi tumour region sampling to characterise the interplay between ITH, immune-reactivity and immune-regulation in non-small cell lung cancer patients.