Addressing the next Global Challenge: cancer immunotherapies to treat solid tumours
Communications and Campaigns Manager
Cancer is a multifaceted global health challenge that continues to demand innovative solutions and interventions. 19.3 million new cancer cases and around 10 million related deaths were registered worldwide in 2020. With the number of new cases expected to rise by an average of 47% from 2020 to 2040, developing new, improved and more effective cancer therapies is an urgent global challenge requiring extensive R&D efforts.
Over the last decade, immunotherapy has revolutionised the treatment of cancer. Since the first cancer immunotherapy was approved in 2011, it has been one of the most important and promising areas of cancer research, with numerous breakthrough therapies coming to market.
Particular immunotherapy approaches have generated significant excitement. For example, the success of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapies, and new advances towards personalised mRNA cancer vaccines. These step-changes are mirrored with investment, which is only set to increase. In 2021, the global immuno-oncology market was valued at US$45.1 billion. And it’s expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 20.3% between 2022-2030.
Why are we running a Global Challenge campaign on immuno-oncology?
Emerging in 2020 as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, our Global Challenge programme works to leverage our two matchmaking platforms, Connect and Discover, to accelerate technical solutions to society’s greatest health and environmental challenges.
We know from speaking with our extensive pharma and biotech R&D networks (which includes 24/25 of the top R&D-spending life science companies), and from monitoring their activity on our matchmaking platforms, that there is still a clear unmet demand for academic innovations in immuno-oncology.
Immuno-oncology is an established market for biopharma. However, we see in the activity on our platforms that there are still many new connections to be made and innovations to be uncovered, with new research steadily coming through from academic institutes, and Discover campaigns being run by industry leaders to find the latest breakthroughs.
Immunotherapy is transforming cancer care and opening new therapeutic avenues by harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. As well as improving the quality and efficacy of care (surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy) for patients, the growth of cancer immunotherapy has dramatically changed our understanding of the basics of cancer biology and the tumour microenvironment. But there are still significant technical R&D challenges to overcome to make effective cancer immunotherapies that are safe and accessible to patients who need them.
Through navigating this landscape, the next campaign in our Global Challenge programme will aim to accelerate the development of new interventions to treat solid tumour cancers by surfacing the next generation of academic immuno-oncology research and delivering these to companies working on aligned solutions with their R&D pipelines.
What are the key challenges facing researchers working on immuno-oncology?
Decades of research have shown that the immune system can recognise and even reject tumours. But in the case of cancerous tumours, immunologists have been trying to determine how and why the immune system fails. Immunotherapy aims to boost the immune system of cancer patients by improving its ability to recognise a cancerous tumour, or by providing a missing immune effector function. It’s a treatment approach that holds the potential of a life-long cure.
While breakthrough immunotherapies have been effective in targeting certain cancers in some patients, there exists a wide range of cancers, each with their own complexities and specificities to each individual that remain an unmet need for detection and treatment. In order to ensure these therapies are more effective across all cancers and patients, it’s important to identify the key challenges and roadblocks facing researchers, including how to personalise treatments to individual patients to improve success rates.
Following our research and conversations with industry experts, we’ve defined the scope of this challenge to focus on treatments that target solid tumours, as their more complex tumour microenvironment makes them more difficult to treat with some existing cancer immunotherapies.
How are we going to work to help solve the challenge?
Our Global Challenge programme aims to mobilise the academia-industry ecosystem to start conversations and partnerships that ultimately address an unmet need in global health or sustainability. We do this by running a challenge-style campaign modelled on our Discover platform to surface new research and assets, and by leveraging our online matchmaking platform, Connect, to initiate the conversations and partnerships.
The goal of this campaign is to uncover the latest immunotherapy breakthroughs targeting solid tumours from academic institutes and delivering them to external innovation and R&D teams with aligned interests across our global network of 6,000+ companies. We also aim to facilitate new partnerships that can lead to the development of new innovative cancer immunotherapies to be rolled out to patients across the globe.
How can you get involved?
Showcase your research to our industry network
We’re looking for non-confidential details of novel academic research or assets leveraging immuno-oncology to treat solid tumour cancers. More information about how to submit research from your institute can be found on our landing page and the submission form. We will proactively disseminate all the cancer immunotherapies projects and opportunities that we receive from academic institutes to our industry campaign partners and wider immuno-onolcogy industry network.
Engage with R&D-driven companies working on immuno-oncology
Through the campaign, we will explore the current technical challenges in immuno-oncology R&D with the aim of surfacing solutions that accelerate the development of innovative cancer immunotherapy treatments. These technical R&D needs and priorities are being defined by our industry campaign partners, MSD, Tocris Bioscience, and Immunitas Therapeutics. Each will present their R&D priorities and partnering strategies in a series of webinars in the second half of February 2023 as part of our Global Challenge Virtual Series. Reserve a free place on our industry partnering events here.
Connect with the next generation of immuno-oncology research
If your company or team are searching for immuno-oncology innovations from academia, learn more about how to review and engage with the opportunities submitted to the campaign on our landing page for industry. By completing this form, your R&D needs and priorities will be distributed to our extended academic network as a shareable PDF document, and our team will ensure you are sent a curated list of the most relevant opportunities submitted to the campaign.
Request an introduction to our academic partners.
For this campaign, we have partnered with two of the world’s leading cancer research institutes, the National Cancer Institute (US) and The Institute of Cancer Research (UK). As academic partners for the Global Challenges, these institutes will be sharing selected portfolios of cutting-edge technologies from academics at their respective institutes actively searching for industry partners to commercialise their research. View their opportunities and capabilities in shareable one-page PDFs. At the end of February, leading academics from each institute will be sharing their research priorities and an overview of their latest tech portfolios via our ‘academic partnering opportunity’ events, as part of our Virtual Series, which is running alongside the Global Challenge campaign.
In summary…
If you’re working on immuno-oncology solutions in academia or industry, get involved!
For more information drop our team a message.
Our campaign is scheduled to launch on the 31st January 2023. If you’re registered to any of our platforms, you’ll receive more information by email. And to keep updated with our work addressing global challenges you can follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.
Written by Anabel Bennett. Edited by Alex Stockham and Joseph Ferner.
Copyrights reserved unless otherwise agreed – IN-PART Publishing Ltd., 2023: ‘Addressing the next Global Challenge: cancer immunotherapies to treat solid tumours’
IN-PART:
We believe brilliant connections can solve real-world problems. We match research pioneers from academia with decision-makers in industry sectors striving for a greater positive impact.
Our goal is to enable connections from around the world to match academic research with industry on a level playing field. Through our intelligent, matchmaking platform we showcase leading university innovations and connect academics with an international community of decision-makers in industry, creating meaningful dialogue and partnership.
Connect, a digital partnering platform for university-industry collaboration.
250+ universities and research institutes around the world currently showcase their research and innovation on IN-PART to find new collaboration partners in industry. R&D teams get free access to the platform (create an account here). There are no hidden costs and we don’t claim downstream success fees.
Discover, a bespoke scouting service for open innovation.
Through Discover, corporate R&D teams can leverage our extended academic network, which reaches multiple teams across 2,600+ universities and research institutes worldwide. In response to a specific research requirement or challenge, Discover enables R&D teams to identify new opportunities for commercialisation or to solicit proposals for new research.
Interested in speaking with our Discover team? Request a demo | TTO or academic? Sign-up for weekly Discover emails.
