Is there a lung cancer cure living on your skin?
Cancer types:
Lung cancer
Project period:
–
Research institute:
The Francis Crick Institute
Award amount:
£245,157
Location:
United Kingdom
This project is exploring a truly novel revolutionary way to treat cancer – using a bacteria found on our skin. Professor Julian Downward and his Curestarter team in London will apply cutting edge technology to create a pioneering cancer vaccine for lung cancer.
Why is this research needed?
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide and unfortunately for many patients there are no effective treatment options. Immunotherapy has potential as a way to help more people survive a lung cancer diagnosis, but it has had limited success so far.
Cancer vaccines are a promising innovative type of immunotherapy that train our immune system to effectively detect and destroy cancer. This research will apply this technology to the challenge of curing lung cancer.
Thank you so much to Worldwide Cancer Research’s Curestarters for funding this ambitious project in my lab. It means a great deal to be given this opportunity to carry out work that we believe has a real chance of making a huge difference to the treatment of cancer in the long term and I am so grateful for your support.
What is the science behind this project?
We all have lots of bacteria living in our skin and although you might think that sounds a little disgusting, these teeny tiny creatures are generally harmless and can actually help us stay healthy. Remarkably Professor Julian Downward also believes he can engineer one of them, Staphylococcus epidermidis, into a new cancer cure.
The bacterium will be adapted by the team in London to create a vaccine therapy that targets lung cancer. This is such a clever way to do this because the bacteria will trigger both an immediate response from the immune system and also long-term immune memory, reducing the risk of cancer recurring.
Professor Downward has teamed up with leading experts in immunotherapy to help make this project a success. They are also using state-of-the-art lung cancer models that closely replicate how lung cancer behaves in the body so that any discoveries they make have the best chance of being translated into new treatments for patients.
What difference could this project make to patients in the future?
I.8 million people worldwide died from lung cancer in 2022. Current treatments are failing these patients and their families so we urgently need new approaches to dealing with this devastating disease.
This project hopes to create a completely new type of lung cancer treatment – a bacterial vaccine. This would be a relatively low-cost treatment that has the potential to work well on large numbers of patients around the world, helping us reach a day where no life is cut short from lung cancer.
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