The Fernandes Group focusses on dissecting and manipulating immune receptor signalling and developing methods to identify targets of immune recognition. Ricardo Fernandes has now been awarded a Cancer Research UK Immunology Project Award to continue these studies. In particular, he will be looking at characterising T cell receptor sequences that display anti-tumour responses and checking how these could cross-react to non-tumour antigens.
In this newly funded project, the Fernandes group will engineer tumour specific TCRs and determine their cross-reactivity to host peptides before combining these with other engineered receptors to sensitise T cell responses against tumours. They anticipate that these results will inform the development of cell-based therapies for eliciting robust antitumour T-cell responses.
Read the full story on the CAMS-Oxford website.