Our laboratory has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to devise a biomarker and model-driven treatment stratification approaches, by bridging the gap between Physics, Biology and Medicine, particularly in the field of translational cancer research. We demonstrated for the first time the mechanism of how intracellular/exosomal PD-L1 trafficking is part of a tightly regulated immune surveillance mechanism linking exosomal measurements in the blood to direct cell-cell immunosuppressive interactions.
For clinical translation, we have pioneered the visualisation of protein interactions and conformational changes that are critical for cancer signalling pathways in preclinical models; as well as in patient-derived cancer tissues for establishing in vitro/companion diagnostics. These molecular and immunological expertise is being applied towards deep profiling of circulating immune cells and exosomes within the EU IMI2 consortium IMMUNAN (Integrated IMMUnoprofiling of large adaptive CANcer pa-tients cohorts).
Group lead
Richard Dimbleby Professor of Cancer Research