Project: Optimized T cells for personalized immunotherapy for solid cancer

Acronym	OptiCAN (Reference Number: ERAPERMED2020-222)
Project Topic	The overall goal of OptiCAN is to overcome the present limitations of CAR T cell therapies and extend their application towards personalized immunotherapy of solid tumors through advanced genetic engineering of patient-derived T cells. This will pave the way to bring these optimized T cell products into clinical application. We will achieve this goal by testing different innovative approaches for functional improvement of T cells to treat pancreatic cancer and melanoma as model indications. In more detail, we will define the most-efficient starting cell subpopulation for the generation of such effective T cells for cancer therapy develop the most effective gene-engineering technologies for functional improvement of the T cell product by use of innovative adapter-CAR and boost-CAR technologies apply advanced imaging technologies to investigate the tumor microenvironment and to develop strategies for overcoming its immunosuppressive milieu establish innovative animal (PDXv2.0) and human preclinical models (tumor slices) to prove the in vivo and ex vivo efficacy of the generated T cells integrate the project achievements into a novel workflow for manufacturing of optimized personalized cell products (ATMP) for solid tumor therapy in accordance with regulatory and ethical requirements From the results we expect a substantial health impact as the innovative treatment strategy with advanced manufacturing protocols for highly effective and controllable CAR T cell products using Miltenyi’s automated CliniMACS Prodigy can easily be transferred and spread to hospitals across Europe. The OptiCAN strategy will not be limited to pancreatic cancer or melanoma but can be transferred to other solid tumor entities as well. Thus, we will improve treatment options for terminally-ill cancer patients throughout Europe. We will additionally investigate ethical and regulatory aspects currently slowing down the transition of personalized cancer immunotherapy into clinical routine.
Network	ERA PerMed
Call	3rd Joint Transnational Call for Proposals (2020)

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	Miltenyi Biotec B.V. & Co KG	Coordinator	Germany
2	University Hospital Munich, LMU Munich	Partner	Germany
3	Sahlgrenska Cancer Center at University of Gothenburg (UGOT)	Partner	Sweden
4	Institut Cochin, Inserm U1016-CNRS UMR8104-Université Paris Descartes	Partner	France