Under the leadership of Christian Seitz, senior physician at Heidelberg University Hospital, research group leader at the Hopp Children's Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ) and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and Martin Ebinger, deputy medical director and senior physician at Tübingen University Hospital, the team is researching new immunotherapies for certain bone and soft tissue sarcomas - aggressive cancers that particularly affect children, adolescents and young adults and for which there are currently hardly any targeted treatment options.
The “TFusion” project from Heidelberg and Tübingen will receive funding of 1.5 million euros over a period of two years. The project is based on a peptide vaccine concept developed by the University Hospital of Tübingen. Peptide vaccines are based on short amino acid chains (peptides) that are typical of tumour cells and are recognized as “foreign” by the immune system. The vaccine is tailor-made for each patient and is directed against a specific mutation of the tumor. The vaccines are administered in three cycles and are intended to “train” the immune system to target tumor structures.
TFusion now goes one step further: with the help of the data, immune cells, so-called T cells, are to be genetically modified in such a way that they are already programmed for the tumors and are effective against the characteristics of certain types of sarcoma. The new approach thus combines vaccination and cell therapy in order to develop personalized and effective treatments for certain sarcoma diseases in children and adolescents.
