MRC Cancer Immunotherapy Response Research Platform

Funding to establish a broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform capable of generating breakthrough insights into patient response, adverse effects and resistance to immunotherapy.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has launched this opportunity in partnership with the Office for Life Sciences (OLS) to develop a consortium-based, broad utility, deep genotyping and phenotyping platform – comprising of equipment, staff and expertise – that is capable of generating insights into patient response, adverse effects, and resistance to immunotherapy. The platform will unlock insight into mechanisms and markers of response, adverse effects, and loss of response in cancer immune-based therapies (including small molecule, antibody, cell based or vaccine therapy).

In addition to creating a platform, funding should also be used to support an exemplar project or projects seeking to identify marker signatures predicting response or non-response, resistance or toxicity in a defined patient population and therapeutic modality combination.

The overarching long-term ambitions for the platform are:

• Generation of actionable molecular insights to inform patient selection and monitoring to improve the accessibility and appropriate use of approved immune based cancer therapies in clinical practice.
• Generation of transferable mechanistic insights and diagnostic approaches with the potential to unlock a new generation of immunotherapy R&D and research investment in the UK. This could include identification of new immunotherapeutic targets and mechanistically driven combination therapy approaches, as well as informing patient selection for clinical trials of emerging immune based cancer therapeutics.

The award will last for four years and must commence by 1 August 2024.