University of Ottawa

Purpose

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is immunosuppressive and presents many challenges to cancer therapies. Modulating TME to be less immunosuppressive will block tumor immune escape and enhance the effects of cancer immunotherapies such as T-cell therapies. However, TME modulating agents need to be selectively delivered to the tumors to protect them from degradation and inducing unwanted toxicity to healthy organs. This project will develop novel nanoparticle systems containing TME modulating messenger RNA (mRNA) and selectively deliver them to tumors to modulate the TME. The team will assess the therapeutic effects of our mRNA-nanoparticle systems in clinically relevant in vitro and in vivo models. If successful in modulating the TME to be less immunosuppressive, the proposed technologies will have tremendous potential in the advancement of future CAR-T or other types of cellular immunotherapies for solid tumours.