Engineering Macrophages as a Cellular Vaccine to Enhance Anti-Tumour Immunity
Supervisors: Dr Ahmet Hazini, Dr Kerry Fisher
Project Overview
Macrophages possess unique attributes that make them highly relevant in the context of immuno-oncology. Firstly, they can efficiently sense and migrate to tumours, which explains why many solid tumours are enriched with macrophages. Another important feature is their remarkable plasticity: depending on environmental signals, they can adopt either anti-tumour or pro-tumour functions. Crucially, macrophages can also be reprogrammed to stimulate adaptive immune responses. As professional antigen-presenting cells (APCs), macrophages have the potential to elicit adaptive immunity not only against primary tumours but also against disseminated ones. However, their antigen-presenting capacity is generally weaker compared to dendritic cells (DCs), which are considered the most potent APCs. A major limitation is that DCs are scarce within the tumour microenvironment (TME), whereas macrophages are abundant. This project aims to employ molecular and cellular strategies to enhance the antigen-presenting ability of macrophages, thereby improving their capacity to drive effective adaptive immune responses and harness their potential as cellular cancer vaccines.
References
Yang, S., Wang, Y., Jia, J., Fang, Y., Yang, Y., Yuan, W. and Hu, J., 2024. Advances in engineered macrophages: a new frontier in cancer immunotherapy. Cell Death & Disease, 15(4), p.238.