Decoding the cancer glycoproteome driven immune response
Cancer continues to be the most formidable challenge in modern medicine and the second leading cause of deaths worldwide. However, in recent years, the treatment of unresectable cancer has undergone a paradigm shift with the advent of immunotherapy. Yet, despite the great progress in the field, the majority of cancer patients still do not respond to any of the available immunotherapeutics and no reliable biomarker exists to predict those patients that would benefit from it.

In order to facilitate the development of new strategies for immunotherapy, and to identify improved predictive biomarkers for treatment response, the GlyCANswer project envisions to elucidate how the cancer glycoproteome dictates the immune response. The GlyCANswer project aims to unravel the interplay between the cancer cell glycoproteome and immune recognition in the two most frequent malignancies worldwide, namely lung and breast cancer. By using a combination of cutting-edge glycoproteomics, glycomics and immune profiling approaches in innovative mouse models and cell culture systems, the GlyCANswer project will 1) map the immunomodulatory glycosylation of cancer cells 2) explore the detailed mechanisms of glycan-mediated immune regulation 3) identify new biomarkers and provide new therapeutic targets for immune therapy.