EPIC · Enabling Precision Immuno-oncology in Colorectal cancer

Immunotherapy with checkpoints blockers is transforming the treatment of advanced cancers. Colorectal cancer (CRC), a cancer with 1.4 million new cases diagnosed annually worldwide, is refractory to immunotherapy (with the exception of a minority of tumors with microsatellite instability). This is somehow paradoxical as CRC is a cancer for which we have shown that it is under immunological control and that tumor infiltrating lymphocytes represent a strong independent predictor of survival. Thus, there is an urgent need to broaden the clinical benefits of immune checkpoint blockers to CRC by combining agents with synergistic mechanisms of action. An attractive approach to sensitize tumors to immunotherapy is to harness immunogenic effects induced by approved conventional or targeted agents.Here I propose a new paradigm to identify molecular determinants of resistance to immunotherapy and develop personalized in silico and in vitro models for predicting response to combination therapy in CRC. The EPIC concept is based on three pillars: 1) emphasis on antitumor T cell activity; 2) systematic interrogation of tumor-immune cell interactions using data-driven modeling and knowledge-based mechanistic modeling, and 3) generation of key quantitative data to train and validate algorithms using perturbation experiments with patient-derived tumor organoids and cutting-edge technologies for multidimensional profiling. We will investigate three immunomodulatory processes: 1) immunostimulatory effects of chemotherapeutics, 2) rewiring of signaling networks induced by targeted drugs and their interference with immunity, and 3) metabolic reprogramming of T cells to enhance antitumor immunity. The anticipated outcome of EPIC is a precision immuno-oncology platform that integrates tumor organoids with high-throughput and high-content data for testing drug combinations, and machine learning for making therapeutic recommendations for individual patients.