Summary

In the last decades, increasing knowledge of principles of the immune system and its regulatory immune circuits has driven the development of revolutionary immunotherapeutic strategies. Yet, due to the genetic plasticity of cancer cells and due to an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, tumor cells can evade the immune system. To address this problem the research team from Achim Temme exploits different combinatorial approaches reaching from targeted delivery of immune-modifiers to genetically modified immune effector cells to fight cancer.  
The research team of the “Section Experimental Neurosurgery/Tumor Immunology” at the Department of Neurosuergery, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus Dresden focuses on the development of advanced immunotherapeutic and gene therapy approaches to treat primary brain tumors and metastatic brain tumors. In particular, chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) and their lentiviral transduction into NK cells have been established. Such CAR-NK cells can be implemented in multimodal therapies. They were successfully tested in pre-clinical experiments and are further systematically improved for clinical use. Yet, efficient migration of transferred NK cells into solid tumors and maintaining their optimal function in an immunosuppressive environment is a further task. Therefore, single chain antibody (scFv)-targeted nanoparticle delivery of therapeutic payloads to modify the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment as well to prime immune effector cells is currently in the focus of the research group.