Dr Olivier Pardo
Imperial College London
Awarded: £150,000
The challenge
Immunotherapy is a type of treatment that uses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy works well for some types of cancer, but unfortunately it doesn’t work well for people with osteosarcoma. This could be because osteosarcoma doesn’t trigger a strong immune response, making immunotherapy treatment less effective.
Osteosarcoma cells avoid immune attack by switching off immune signals and producing molecules that block immune activity.
How will this project tackle this challenge?
Dr Olivier Pardo at Imperial College London will supervise a PhD student looking into ways to reactivate the immune system against osteosarcoma. They will target two proteins, S6K2 and hnRNPA1, which help cancer cells switch off immune responses. By blocking these proteins they aim to stimulate immune activity and make osteosarcoma cells vulnerable to immune attack.
They will then combine this approach with a novel immunotherapy called CAR T-cell therapy. CAR T cells are engineered to recognise specific molecules on cancer cells and kill them, with minimal risk to healthy tissues. The team has previously identified a CAR molecule, OSCAR, that targets osteosarcoma lung metastases. By inhibiting S6K2 and hnRNPA1, they aim to improve the ability of CAR T cells to destroy osteosarcoma cells.
What this means for people affected by sarcoma
By making osteosarcoma cells vulnerable to immune attack, this project could lead to more effective therapies with fewer side effects, improving both survival and quality of life. As CAR T-cell therapy is already in clinical use for other cancers, findings from this project could help inform development of future treatments for osteosarcoma.
