The group's goal is to develop new targeted and personalised cancer immunotherapies. To this end, the group combines bioinformatics and molecular research to identify neoantigens and develop cancer vaccines based on these molecules
The Neoantigens and Vaccines against Cancer (NeoVaCan) group performs immunogenomic analyses of solid tumours and liquid biopsies to study the interplay between tumour cells and the immune microenvironment. Multi-omics coupled to functional T-cell-based assays is deployed to obtain a deeper understanding of the host immune response to cancer and to identify immune escape mechanisms.
A main pillar of the group’s work is to identify and characterize neoantigens (mutated peptides expressed only by tumour cells) to be used as targets for immunotherapies, with a special focus on neoantigen vaccines. NeoVaCan is, with the VIC group, co-developing preventive and therapeutic neoantigen vaccines using an in-house virus-like particle (VLP)-based vaccine platform.