Professor Sophia Karagiannis and her team want to design a new generation of antibody-based treatments for triple negative breast cancer. This could lead to much-needed new ways to treat this type of breast cancer – saving lives and helping people live well.
In this section
What's the challenge?
Triple negative breast cancer can be more aggressive and harder to treat than other types of breast cancer. And currently, there aren’t enough targeted treatments available for it. That’s why our researchers are looking for new and better ways to treat it.
Antibodies are made by the body to prevent infections, but our immune system can also use them to kill cancer cells. Antibody-based treatments are very successful in some types of breast cancer, but sometimes they don’t work as effectively as we’d like. We need to find ways to make them work better against triple negative breast cancer.
My team is designing and optimising antibodies that can target treatment-resistant triple negative breast cancer cells. We’re testing how these antibodies best activate the immune system, and how well they work with cancer drugs attached to them. Our aim is to select the most promising candidates and develop them into new treatments.
Professor Sophia Karagiannis
The science behind the research
Professor Sophia Karagiannis’s research is focused on antibody-based breast cancer treatments. Antibodies are molecules made by our immune system, but they can also be designed in the lab.
Antibodies can be used to treat breast cancer because they can recognise and attach to molecules on the outside of cancer cells. This tells the immune system to destroy them. Antibodies can also have drugs attached to them to boost their anti-cancer properties, delivering the drug directly to cancer cells.
What projects are the team working on?
Sophia and her team are focusing on 4 main projects:
- Developing new treatments for triple negative breast cancer
The team is testing if targeting a protein called Folate Receptor Alpha (FRα) could work as a treatment. This protein is mostly absent in healthy tissues, but it’s found in some cancers including triple negative breast cancer.
A drug which targets FRα has already been approved for advanced ovarian cancer in the United States. Now, Sophia’s team is investigating if similar treatments could work for breast cancer.
They’re studying samples from people with breast cancer and measuring how much FRα is present. By combining this with genetic and immune system data, they hope to understand who is most likely to benefit from therapies that target FRα. - Exploring different ways to target the FRα protein
The researchers are also investigating the best way to target FRα. Which part of the FRα an antibody treatment attaches to can influence how well the treatment works.
So, the researchers are testing 6 different antibodies to find the most effective version. They’re also using artificial intelligence (AI) to see if they can develop even better antibodies to target FRα. - Designing antibodies that turn the immune system on
Antibody-based treatments work by turning on the immune system to target the cancer. But sometimes, they struggle to fully do this because they press both “go” and “stop” buttons on the immune cells.
Sophia and her team want to improve their anti-FRα antibodies by optimising how they engage with these immune cells. They’re engineering a specific part of the antibody to better connect with the “go” button.
The team is also studying how these new antibodies affect a type of immune cells, called gamma-delta T cells. They may help boost the body’s natural defences even further. -
Using antibodies to deliver drugs to triple negative tumours
Sophia and her team are also developing antibodies which have anti-cancer drugs attached to them. The idea is that the antibody delivers the drug directly to the tumour. This means healthy cells elsewhere in the body aren’t exposed to the drug and side-effects are reduced.
Working closely with Professors Andrew Tutt and Chris Lord, Sophia’s team is combining their most-promising anti-FRα antibodies with a powerful anti-cancer drug. They’re fine-tuning this treatment and testing it in cells, and later in mice, to see how well it works.
The team is also testing how these treatments affect immune cells and healthy tissues, to make sure they’re safe. Ultimately, they hope to match these advanced therapies to people with triple negative breast cancer who are most likely to benefit.
What difference will this research make?
Sophia and her team hope to create a new generation of antibody-based treatments for triple negative breast cancer.
These treatments could help the immune system destroy triple negative breast cancer cells. This could lead to new ways to treat the disease, saving lives and helping people to live well.
How many people could this research help?
Thousands. Every year in the UK, over 8,000 people are diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. That’s 15% of all breast cancer diagnoses.