Professor Mark Lowdell

“This project aims to find out whether patients with RCC have NK cells which can be enhanced by INKmune. And if so how we can determine which RCC patients are most likely to benefit from INKmune in a clinical trial.”

Professor Mark Lowdell
Professor of Cell & Gene Therapy
University College London, UK

Assessment of Human NK Cell Responses and Potentiation in Patients with Renal Cell Cancer – Pre-clinical Study to Support a Phase 2a Clinical Trial

Research Summary

Cancers arise in people because the person’s immune response has failed to kill the tumour cells as they develop. All people have cells in their blood called Natural killer cells (NK) and these are the first line of defence against cancer. People with low NK function have a higher risk of cancer and cancer patients with the lowest NK function have poorer prognosis even after chemotherapy. Our group has studied NK cell responses to cancers for over 25 years and we have discovered ways to activate NK cells to make them better at killing cancer cells. We have shown this in many different cancers including leukaemia, lymphoma, breast cancer and ovarian cancer and are conducting clinical trials of these activated NK cells in leukaemia and ovarian cancer. This project aims to find out whether patients with renal cancer (RCC) have NK cells which can be enhanced by our NK-activating drug, INKmune, and, if so, how we can determine which RCC patients are most likely to benefit from INKmune in a clinical trial. The outcome of this research will be the data to design a clinical trial and to support an application to the UK drug regulatory agency (MHRA) for a trial in 2023.