Therapeutic optimisation of dendritic cell function in oesophageal adenocarcinoma  

This research project was awarded the 2024 Birmingham BRC Collaboration Fund

Status: This project is complete

This project brought together researchers from the Cancer themes of the NIHR Birmingham and Oxford Biomedical Research Centres to investigate the immune response to oesophageal adenocarcinoma, one of the most common forms of oesophageal cancer and a disease that often responds poorly to treatment.

Project aims

Our project aimed to develop a way to make new immune therapies to treat oesophageal adenocarcinoma.  

Previous research by the team provided the first global assessment of the cellular composition of the immune cells in this tumour. We found that a particular cell, called a plasmacytoid dendritic cell (pDC), was increased in the tumour but levels fell after successful chemotherapy. Importantly, pDC have been shown to be increased and abnormal in stomach cancer, which is a very similar disease. This work suggests that these cells, which normally ‘activate’ the immune system, lose this ability. If this could be reversed, it would open up new treatment opportunities. 

Building on these findings, our team have: 

• brought together two very large datasets from Birmingham and Oxford in order to undertake a detailed assessment of why these cells are dysfunctional

• created and analysed tumour tissue sections, and used these to assess levels of immune activation and explore how these relate to patients’ responses to chemotherapy

• successfully gained permission to analyse data from the OCCAMS consortium, a major UK research collaboration studying oesophageal cancer

• extended this by analysing our own UK Biobank immunology data to complete the first assessment of the genetic and environmental factors that determine the level of pDC within the body