Our group aims to develop new T-cell based concepts for cancer immunotherapy that overcome the major challenge of self-tolerance in cancer. To this end, one of our main strategies involves studies of how the immune system from healthy donors can target patient cancer cells. We have a strong focus on the development of new technologies that allow high-throughput identification of therapeutic targets that can evoke immune responses, as lack of immunogenic targets represents a major limitation in therapeutic efficacy. The group furthermore has a strong translational focus and performs penetrating mechanistic analyses in clinical trials together with our clinical partners.
Johanna Olweus was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant (September 2020-2025) to pursue the goal of utilizing the mechanism of transplant rejection to identify self-reactive, therapeutic TCRs from healthy donors with the project “OUTSOURCE”. In Dec 2021 the group published proof-of-concept for this approach in Nature Biotechnology.
- Research area 1: Targeting of cancer-specific mutations
- Research area 2: Targeting of self-antigens
- Research area 3: Profiling of T-cell receptors
| The group is a member of the Centre of Excellence - Precision Immunotherapy Alliance (PRIMA). |
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