When a cancer develops, its growth is initially often suppressed by the patient’s own immune system, but later progresses once it escapes from this immune control. A new era in cancer therapy began with the discovery that it is possible to re-activate the immune system to successfully fight cancer cells. Broadly active immune-stimulating agents that were used early-on are now gradually replaced by more specific approaches that are tailored to individual tumor types and patients.

A major development in the field of immunotherapies are cell-based methods where living immune cells are obtained from the patient and either selected and expanded to increase potency and amount, or modified to enhance or even create their ability to recognize and eliminate tumor cells. Cell-based therapies combine the excellent selectivity of our immune system against target cells with its efficient killing mechanisms which act at the level of single target cells and are largely free of side effects. First therapies using leukemia-targeting thymocytes have recently been approved, and methods to expand this class of therapies using optimized targeting designs and additional types of immune cells such as natural killer (NK) cells, macrophages or dendritic cells are being developed to also fight solid tumors.

EPFL has various strengths in basic and translational cancer research and broad expertise in bioengineering technologies which need to be combined towards this goal. Research groups aligned hereunder have track records and future promise to make instrumental contributions to this exciting new field of cancer therapies.