Research line

Despite the revolutionary success of cancer T-Cell Immunotherapies their efficacy in treating solid tumours, is still very limited. Cancer heterogeneity between patients, and even within the same tumour, challenges the achievement of consistent clinical outcomes and has triggered the development of a multitude of T cell-based therapies using sophisticated engineering approaches: CART, bi-specific antibodies, TCR based, metabolome sensing. However, these widely exploited ‘living’ drugs are inherently dynamic and utilize different cellular strategies to achieve tumour targeting that cannot be analysed through a single snapshot readout. Dynamic live imaging can capture complex cellular function that spans overtime, explore functional differences between T cells, and define cellular events leading to tumour killing. In this research line we exploit computer vision and analytical tools to understand how T cell achieve successful killing, or different modes of disfunction and their relation to tumor resistance.