2015: YETI
The YEasT Immunotherapy project
Cancer thrives by preventing the immune system from targeting tumor cells. While current immunotherapies use dendritic cells to activate T-cells towards specific tumor antigens, they remain expensive and of variable efficiency against tumor immunosuppressive environment. To address these issues, our team mainly focused on engineering a S. cerevisiae yeast immunotherapy that was ultimately tested in vivo on mice presenting melanoma. Three complementary strategies were combined: First, in order to modulate the tumor environment, yeast secreting immune modulators, GM-CSF and IFNgamma, were encapsulated into alginate beads and injected in tumors. Secondly, to break the immune tolerance against cancer cells, T4 and T8 lymphocytes were elicited by a yeast antigen display system. Last, to deliver cytotoxic compounds solely in the tumor environment, a yeast hypoxia bio-sensor was designed. A side project consisted in engineering E. coli to drive MAIT lymphocytes against cancer cells instead of their original targets, parasitized cells.
For more infos, visit our WIKI and/or look at our POSTER.
Rewards
Silver Medal
The 2015 iGEM competition
In 2015, 268 team from 39 countries participated at the competition and more than 2700 people attended the Giant Jamboree that was held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA, USA from 24th to 28th of September 2015. Full infos and results are available on the iGEM 2015 website.
After iGEM
After the Jamboree, the project idea was continued by the startup Inovactis co-founded by two team members.
