Funded by The Little Princess Trust and administered by CCLG
Lead investigator: Dr Alexander Davies, University of Oxford
Award: £33,854.00
Awarded April 2022
Neuroblastoma is a cancer affecting about 100 children every year in the UK. Around 50 of those children have high-risk neuroblastoma, which has only a 40-50% survival rate after 5 years. In patients whose cancer is resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy the next treatment option is antibody immunotherapy.
Antibody immunotherapy works by using the body’s own immune system to target and kill cancer cells. It does this either by creating a chemical reaction which punches holes in the cancer cells, killing them, or by helping the body’s ‘killer’ immune cells to destroy the cancer. Unfortunately, immunotherapy also causes serious side effects, including pain and nerve damage, meaning that treatment might need to be reduced or stopped all together. Scientists have tried using mutated antibodies to reduce nerve damage and pain, but this wasn't very effective.
The research team at the University of Oxford, led by Dr Alexander Davies, want to look more closely at how the different parts of antibodies could be affecting nerves. Antibodies are covered in a sugar molecules structure, which not much is known about. The researchers plan to change the sugar structure of antibodies with enzymes to see how it interacts with nerve cells. By changing the sugar structure, they aim to reduce the negative effects of the antibody on nerves, while still allowing them to help kill cancer cells. The team will use the latest stem cell technology to create human nerve cells in the lab to test the effects of the new antibodies, which will make their findings as relevant to patients as possible. Dr Alexander Davies hopes that a better understanding how the structure of antibodies affects their interactions with nerve cells will lead to safer and more effective treatments for neuroblastoma.