genTIL: Generation of a commercially viable Tumour Infiltrating Lymphocyte (TIL) therapy

Cancer specific Adoptive T-Cell therapy (ACT) is a form of personalised medicine that harnesses the power of the patient's immune system to direct tumour-specific T-cells to kill cancer cells. The field of adoptive T-cell therapy has approached a point where the pre-clinical promise is now a clinical reality. Since the first report of use of TIL therapy in 1988, it has gone through several generations of improvement with trials using “Young TILs” unselected T cells and patient preconditioning producing excellent response rates – around 40% to 50% long term responses and around 10-20% cures. The vast potential of this field of cell therapy has been acknowledged by major pharmaceutical companies who are sponsoring multi-centre clinical trials (e.g. Novartis - CTL019, Adaptimmune/GSK - NY-ESO-1 SPEAR™). There is a market need for a robust reproducible, logistically scalable commercial process suitable for industrialisation of TIL Therapy. However, the wide-spread application of this form of cell therapy on an industrial scale is currently severely limited by the complexity associated with delivering a personalised cancer therapy. This project plans to address the major hurdles in making TIL therapy commercially viable: (i) point of collection and (ii) stabilisation of cellular material and final product.