CD Laboratory for Personalized Immunotherapy

This CD Laboratory researches the interaction between tumours and the individual immune system in order to create a fundamental understanding for the further development of immunomodulating agents for metastatic tumour disease.

Interactions between tumour tissue and a patient's individual immune system take place according to a complex interplay that is still poorly understood. However, a sound understanding of this complex orchestra of activating and suppressing signals is an essential basis for the use and, above all, the clinical development of immunomodulating therapy strategies in patients with metastatic tumours. This CD Laboratory therefore aims to investigate these multimodal, immunological factors and thus create the basis for the further development of immunomodulating therapies.

In a retrospective cohort, characteristics of the tumour tissue should be investigated using immunohistochemical methods and sequencing. In a subgroup of patients, two or more tumour samples from different locations or at different times in the course of the disease will also be analysed in order to understand the variability of immunological factors in space and time. With the support of machine learning methods, the radiological images of the patients will be analysed and correlated with the results of the tissue analyses in order to develop a prediction model for the therapy response.

The findings obtained in the retrospective cohort are to be validated in a prospective cohort, which will be acquired during the term of the CD Laboratory. The prospective cohort will include patients with anti-programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)-based monotherapy or combination therapy as well as patients with other systemic forms of therapy such as chemotherapy, targeted therapy and other immunomodulatory therapy. All patients will be treated according to the recommendation of an interdisciplinary tumour board in line with the current standard of care.

In an internationally unique bio-bank, tumour material, blood, stool, urine and saliva are collected from the prospective cohort several times during the treatment period and subsequently examined using a complex examination panel.

The correlation of immunological blood parameters ('liquid biopsies') and the gut microbiome with clinical characteristics including survival, tissue-based factors and imaging techniques allows the establishment of a multimodal analysis scheme with regard to the individual immune response and its influence on metastatic cancer.

The findings of this CD Laboratory will contribute significantly to the understanding of immunological factors of cancer progression and thus form the basis for planning future clinical trials individually tailored to the respective immunological status of a patient.