Oral squamous cell carcinoma is a devastating head and neck cancer with poor survival rates and quality of life implications. Surgery is the preferred treatment modality, often with adjuvant radiation treatment and sometimes chemotherapy. However, relapse rates for advanced cancers exceed 65 per cent.
lmmunotherapy is emerging as a new hope for patients. Stimulating or engineering individual patient immune cells to combat cancer cells enables personalised therapy, with the potential to achieve durable responses and even cure. Our multidisciplinary collaboration is pioneering advanced technologies to grow patient tumour tissue and immune cells in the laboratory to test new immunotherapy treatments for patients.
This study will provide proof-of-concept data for novel personalised adoptive cell therapy approaches - treatment that uses the cells of a patient's immune system to eliminate cancer - with immediate translational potential for improving patient outcomes.