Resurrecting ancestral sugars: a molecular archaeology approach to immunotherapy

In the last decade the precision treatment of cancer has been revolutionised.

Firstly by targeted delivery of potent small molecule drugs as antibody conjugates, and subsequently by innovative cancer immunotherapy strategies which coopt the patient's own immune system to fight the cancer.

In this project we aim to harness aspects of both these field defining strategies, using chemical glycobiology to develop a completely novel 'molecular archaeology' approach to cancer immunotherapy, by resurrecting the biosynthetic pathway of an ancestral sugar which would initiate a change in the recognition of a cancer cell by the immune system from 'self' to 'non-self'.

We will validate this approach by focussing on prostate cancer, which affects 1 in 8 men in the UK.