Glioblastoma is an aggressive and highly malignant brain tumour with a dismal 5-year survival rate of just 5%. New and targeted treatments for glioblastoma are urgently required. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cell therapy has shown early promise for brain tumours, and unlike other drugs, living T cells can effectively cross the blood brain barrier and infiltrate brain tumours. However, a major bottleneck in the field is knowing what to target. Despite sequencing tumours for decades, there is a poor correlation between RNA and protein, and in particular the cell surface proteome of brain tumours remains poorly characterised. To progress new immunotherapy treatments, we have been mapping glioblastoma tumour proteome and uncover novel biomarkers of disease.
In this talk, I will discuss the development of a novel pipeline to discover new CAR T cell targets, and present data of our novel binders to well established glioblastoma targets. I will discuss our early approaches to use logic gating for multitargeting of glioblastoma using CAR T cells and discuss the role of microglia in mediating immunosuppression. Our strategy for developing a robust immunotherapy platform within the newly established brain cancer centre will be discussed.