Two new projects have been approved by the Grant Agency of Charles University!

Congratulations to Maxmilián Hejl and Nadezda Bragina, two of our Master’s students that have secured funding for their projects from the Grant Agency of Charles University (GAUK)!

The project “Utilising sortase A for the preparation of polymer immunotherapeutics and determining their antitumor activity” with Maxmilián Hejl as the principal investigator aims to develop macromolecular polymer-protein conjugates targeting tumor surface markers and NK cell activating receptors. The conjugate should induce apoptosis of target cells by cross-linking CD20 or HER2 surface markers and serve as an attractant and activator of NK cells to eliminate any remaining cancer cells. This project runs in collaboration with the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

The second project “Novel recombinant immunocytokines to stimulate the antitumor immune response” with Nadezda Bragina as the principal investigator aims to enhance the biological activity of interleukin-2 (IL-2) in cancer therapy while reducing its toxicity by creating IL-2-fusion constructs with anti-IL-2 monoclonal antibodies that selectively stimulate different subsets of immune cells, depending on the antibody used. The project will investigate several variants of these IL-2/mAb immunocytokine constructs differing in the length and nature of the oligopeptide linker, the organism of origin of IL-2 and mAb, and finally, it will assess their therapeutic efficacy in vivo.

Good luck with the projects and their realization!