Scientific communications

Ascites is a pathological peritoneal fluid accumulation most frequently associated with ovarian cancer, among few others, thereby creating a quite unique tumor microenvironment in which cancer cells spread.

As Olink®-certified service Provider, Explicyte offers now high proteomic analysis capabilities for comprehensive protein biomarker discovery using Olink® Target technology.

Olink®’s Target96 biomarker panels are dedicated to many diseases and/or biological processes. You can directly download them from the form below and do not hesitate to let us know your proteomics projects!

Development and characterization of a novel anti-PD1 resistant sarcoma mouse model

Soft Tissue Sarcoma (STS) is known to be refractory to current cancer immunotherapies including the PD1 immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) (Toulmonde et al., 2018), thus claiming the development of novel therapeutic strategies aiming at improving the current clinical benefit.

While one of the promising cancer immunotherapy challenges is the potentiation of immune cell-induced tumor cell attacks, in vitro immune cell-mediated killing is recognized among the most relevant functional measures to evaluate the ability of candidate drugs to promote the functions of effector immune cells. We set up and designed specialized in vitro immune cell killing assays - either T cell- or NK-mediated - to test candidate compounds or antibodies for their immunomodulatory properties in enhancing the immune response against tumor cells.

To pursue our commitment to expand cutting-edge transcriptomic approaches in order to identify novel biomarkers and discover novel actionable targets, our work rely on the GeoMx-DSP technology platform (NanoStringTM) and appropriate target panels – including the Cancer Transcriptome Atlas as well as the Whole Transcriptome Atlas (1800 and 18000 genes, respectively) – an approach which is increasingly reported in scientific publications.

The development of immune checkpoint blockers (ICB) has considerably changed the therapeutic armamentarium for the management of cancer. Blocking the PD-1/PD-L1 axis interaction has demonstrated remarkable anti-cancer activity and has led to approval of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 drugs in several solid tumors. However, most patients receiving PD(L)-1 blockers do not derive clinical benefit. Therefore, there is a crucial need to decipher mechanisms underlying sensitivity / resistance to cancer immunotherapies which can ultimately lead to the identification of novel therapeutic targets.

Take advantage of our upcoming shuttle session - scheduled early-December - to cost-effectively run your candidates on our robust DC differentiation and Mixed Leukocyte Reaction (MLR) assays thereby saving up to 25% on initial cost. 

Characterized through adenosine-mediated suppression results, our validated DC-based assays represent valuable tools for assessing adenosine pathway modulators as well as innovative candidate immunotherapeutics for their potential to enhance DC-mediated T cell stimulation. 

Differentiation and maturation of competent dendritic cells (DCs) is critically dependent on their microenvironment. Among factors which can, in cancer, reach high levels in the tumor microenvironment, adenosine - one of the major immunosuppressive pathways - is known to modulate the function of many cell subsets, including DCs. Adenosine receptor stimulation skews DC differentiation toward a distinct cell population which has, unlike normal myeloid DCs, tolerogenic and suppressive phenotype expressing high levels of proinflammatory and immune suppressor factors, as well as impaired allostimulatory capacity.

Fully set up and characterized syngeneic Lewis LLC1 mouse model featured by (i) a moderate tumor immune infiltration – predominantly constituted of suppressive MDSCs and (ii) accumulation of circulating MDSCs. Interestingly, we showed here that, while LLC1 tumors remain insensitive to PD1 blockade, cyclophosphamide, a reference alkylating anti-cancer agent, led to a tumor growth inhibition and survival rate improvement.

In a recent collaborative work (1) supervised by Pr A. Italiano and published in Nature Cancer (2), we highlighted that the presence of mature tertiary lymphoid structures (mTLS) – a structure of prominent B cell follicles and follicular dendritic cells adjoined to a CD4/CD8 T cell-containing zone - is a new predictive biomarker for response for immune checkpoint blockers.