Non-invasive immune imaging of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in human cancers

Aduro Biotech Europe and the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) have established a public-private partnership in order to develop an imaging agent that can detect the effect of cancer therapies via a non-invasive manner. 

Despite all the recent effort and breakthroughs in the area of cancer immunotherapy, effectiveness is only observed in a subset of 20-40% of cancer patients suffering from advanced disease. In the quest to enhance the effectiveness of currently approved novel agents, >2,000 clinical trials are ongoing to study the effect in combination with cancer immunotherapy. An impressive number of patients are currently treated that will not experience benefit from immunotherapy, but may suffer from treatment-associated side-effects. In addition, over-treatment of these patients results in a significant financial strain on the healthcare system. Therefore, developing an agent that can detect the effect of existing and novel treatments, preferably via a non-invasive manner, will have great societal and economic benefit.

Aduro Biotech Europe and the UMCG will develop a non-invasive imaging agent that specifically visualises tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes within a tumor. By visualizsng such lymphocytes, they expect that they can better predict whether a patient responds to cancer immunotherapy. To validate and justify the use of an imaging agent in the clinical setting, preclinical evaluation is necessary. Therefore, within this project, they will provide proof-of-concept in relevant preclinical cancer model systems. 

After successful completion of the current project they will have developed a non-invasive imaging modality which will help to select optimal treatment for patients and improve quality-of-life for patients that would otherwise experience unnecessary side-effects.