30 octobre 2025: Pr Ton N. Schumacher
12H30
CMU - Auditoire Müller (A250)
suivi d'un apéritif
Hôtes: Pr Mikaël PITTET & Pr Olivier MICHIELIN
Centre de recherche translationnelle en onco-hématologie (CRTOH)
Département de médecine, Faculté de médecine UNIGE & Département d’oncologie, HUG
Pr Ton N. Schumacher
Division of Molecular Oncology & Immunology, The Netherlands Cancer Institute
Oncode Investigator, Oncode Institute
Professor by special appointment Immune Technology, Leiden University
«T cell recognition of human cancer: cracking the code»
Clinically active cancer immunotherapies, including immune checkpoint blockade and TIL therapy, exert their activity by boosting T cell recognition of cancer cells. Furthermore, work by us and others has demonstrated that a substantial part of this tumor-specific T cell response is directed against cancer neoantigens that are unique to each individual tumor. While it is readily feasible to describe which TCR sequences are enriched at tumor sites, we presently lack the capacity to predict the antigen specificity of these TCRs. Development of such predictive algorithms would open up major new possibilities for both patient response prediction and the design of novel cancer immunotherapies. In addition, such capacities could find diagnostic utility in a range of other human conditions.
With the long-term mission to ‘crack the cancer recognition code’ we have created technologies to measure functional TCR signaling in high-throughput semi-synthetic systems. Recent and ongoing work towards a detailed understanding of TCR specificity will be described.
Biography
Ton N. Schumacher is Principal Investigator at The Netherlands Cancer Institute and Oncode Institute, and Professor of Immunotechnology at Leiden University. Research of his lab focuses on the development of novel technologies with which T cell responses can be measured or manipulated, and the subsequent use of these technologies to understand how T cells can recognize and destroy human cancer.
Work over the past years has described the role of the cancer neoantigens that are formed as a consequence of DNA damage in human cancer immunotherapy and provided the first evidence for the superior activity of the, now widely explored, concept of neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade.
Schumacher is recipient of, amongst others, the Queen Wilhelmina Cancer Research Award, Meyenburg Cancer Research Award, William B. Coley Award, and Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine, and Fellow of the AACR and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Schumacher is founder of a number of biotechs that focus on the development of novel cancer immunotherapeutics and is venture partner at Third Rock Ventures.
30 oct. 2025