The excitement and promise of immunotherapy, a type of treatment that harnesses the immune system to fight cancer, is real and has delivered life-saving treatments to many cancer patients. This success has caught the attention of biopharmaceutical companies who are pouring billions of dollars into research and development, acquisitions, and marketing to strengthen their immune-oncology portfolios. This enthusiasm has been driven by the scientific evidence showing remarkable effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy in treating certain types of blood cancers. However, CAR-T therapy has not had any meaningful impact on the outcomes for ovarian patients. Naturally, the most pressing question is why are ovarian cancers refractory to CAR-T therapy and how do we overcome this resistance?

Over the past decade, Dr. Lum and his team have made important discoveries related to how ovarian cancers shut off the immune system. In particular, they found that genetic deletion of a gene called ATG5 dramatically boosts the cancer fighting properties of the immune system. With ATG5 as their hit-to-lead candidate, the three goals of this project are to:

1. Gain new fundamental knowledge on how to optimize gene-edited CAR-T cells;
2. Develop a robust and cost-effective method to generate gene-engineered CAR-T cells within the Canadian biotherapeutic ecosystem;
3. Create a made-in Canada gene-engineering resource and infrastructure for gene-editing CAR-T cells.