HomeProjectsBiomedical Sciences and Healthcare TechnologiesA Novel Neutrophil-based Anticancer Immunotherapy

A Novel Neutrophil-based Anticancer Immunotherapy

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Project Quick Facts

Principal Investigator

  • Prof. TANG Ming Kuen Patrick

    Department of Anatomical and Cellular Pathology

  • Funding

    University Grants Committee

    State Key Laboratory of Translational Oncology of CUHK

    Faculty of Medicine of CUHK

    Faculty Innovation Award

  • Patent

    1 Hong Kong patent granted

  • Award

    First Prize, The 17th‘Challenge Cup’National College Students’ Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Contest

    Innovation First-class Award in the Life Sciences category, The 7th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition

    Bronze Medal, International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva 2022

Our team has developed a novel anticancer immunotherapy in which they genetically engineer the most abundant immune cell type in our blood – Neutrophil.

In this invention, a novel anticancer immunotherapeutic S3KO-TAN can be mass produced by editing human neutrophils with the latest genome engineering technology CRISPR/Cas9. S3KO-TAN shows pronounced anticancer N1 phenotype and effectively inhibits the growth of human lung cancer in animal models. Neutrophils are suitable for allogenic use without antigen pairing and can be easily obtained from blood by-products, markedly overcoming the unsolved barriers of the T-cell immunotherapy. The research team wishes to translate S3KO-TAN into an effective and safe anticancer immunotherapy in the future.

Overview of S3KO-TAN immunotherapy
S3KO-TAN effectively inhibits the growth of human lung carcinoma A549 in mice model without detectable side-effect, due to the enhancement of N1 anticancer cells in the tumor site.

Uniqueness and Competitive Advantages:

  • Effectively targets solid cancer
  • Allogenic use, no need antigen matching
  • Safe without side-effects
  • Mass produce without ex vivo cell expansion
  • Unlimited source from blood donation by-product
S3KO-TAN can be mass produced by genetic engineering neutrophils isolated from the blood donation by-product buffy coat, which shows pronounced cancer-killing activity against human cancer cells A549 in vitro.
S3KO-TAN (blue) shows a unique phenotype compared to the original neutrophils (S3WT-TAN, red) showing by single-cell RNA-sequencing. By capturing the developmental pathway of neutrophils with advanced bioinformatic platform pseudotime, we evidenced that S3KO-TAN effectively preserves their N1 anticancer phenotype in lung carcinoma, suggesting it as a novel source of anticancer cells for allogenic therapy.
S3KO-TAN received several awards in both local and international competitions, highlighting its translational potential for human solid cancers.
Prof. TANG Ming Kuen Patrick, PhD students CHUNG Yat Fai Jeff and CHAN Kam Kwan Max have successfully developed the novel neutrophil-based anticancer immunotherapy S3KO-TAN

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