Antibody and Vaccine Group
Research themes
Find out about the areas of research we investigate.
Understanding FcgR regulation
- long read technologies for FcgR identification
- cell specific regulation of FcgRs
- transcriptional regulation of FcgRs
- Developing mAb engineering approaches to better harness FcgR
Repolarising macrophages for more effective immunotherapy
- identification of receptors expressed on tumour-associated macrophages
- development of methodologies to elicit receptor agonism and antagonism
- generation of novel pre-clinical models to probe effector mechanisms in vivo
- investigating the potential of human stimulator of interferon gene (STING) agonists to reprogramme tumour-associated macrophages
Developing approaches to elicit de novo anti-cancer T cell responses
- Defining the costimulatory signals that evoke protective T cell responses
- Identifying strategies that promote tumoral recruitment and priming of T cells
- Understanding signalling mechanisms of costimulatory receptors
Development of immunostimulatory antibodies (ISA) as safe and effective treatments
- tumour targeted agonism
- manipulation of the antibody hinge to regulate agonism
- identification of novel receptors to evoke immunotherapy
Defining the roles of inhibitory receptors in myeloid cell biology and anti-tumour immunity
- Development of tools to target the LILR family of immune receptors
- Identification of LILR ligands
- New models to study LILRB3
- Evaluation of the contribution of LILRB3 agonism to tumour immunity and self-tolerance
Understanding the impact of nutrition and lifestyle factors on the breast cancer immune environment and immunotherapy response
- understanding the impact of increased adiposity on breast cancer
- developing pre-clinical models (human in vitro and mouse in vivo) to study impact of adiposity on breast cancer development, metastases and therapy response
- identifying strategies to overcome immune dysregulation in breast cancer to augment immunotherapy
Understanding and improving the efficacy of anti-GD2 antibodies in neuroblastoma
Generation of advanced pre-clinical models of cancer
- transgenic, knock-in and knock-out mice
- humanised mouse models of cancer
- cell- and patient-derived xenograft models
Understanding the role of neurotransmitter receptors and in particular GABA receptors in immune cell function and cancer
Development of new GABAergic compounds that do not cross the blood-brain barrier