TRON Translational Oncology Mainz | Connecting Competence

TRON congratulates its cooperation Partner BioNTech SE on its successful IPO!

After the Healthcare Hackathon at the University Medical Center Mainz, the next round started on September 2nd and 3rd in Berlin. A total of 24 interdisciplinary teams took part in this relaxed competition to develop technology-based solutions for medical applications and care within the scope of their projects.

TRON was also represented by Jonas Ibn-Salem at the Healthcare Hackathon in Berlin. He again worked together with the experts from IBM, Garmin, BioNTech and the University Medical Center Mainz on the project already started at the Healthcare Hackathon in Mainz for the improved pre- and aftercare of patients after a hip or knee operation. Using data from Smart-Watches, motion profiles were created before and after the surgical intervention to make it easier for doctors, therapists and patients themselves to objectively monitor recovery.

The team was awarded a prize for their idea and work at the end of the Healthcare Hackathon in Berlin.

TRON is thrilled to announce an article published in Bioinformatics. Author Patrick Sorn shares this Author’s Comment.

Fusion genes, resulting from larger chromosomal rearrangements, can play an important role in the development of cancer. Investigating such events is hence not only essential in understanding cancer biology but may help identify therapeutic targets. Unfortunately, the performance of existing fusion detection tools cannot be evaluated due to the lack of known fusion events. In the past, simulated reads that form such fusion events during alignment have been used to assess the performance of the tools. However, read simulation cannot represent the biological complexity of RNA-seq data.

In this article, we present a method to introduce artificial fusion events into the chromosomal sequences of the human reference genome. Using a dedicated set of fusion detection tools on MCF7 samples, we compared our approach with read simulation data and show that only our tool, ArtiFuse, incorporates the biological variety of sequencing data.

The ArtiFuse approach can be used to benchmark the performance of published fusion detection tools and helps to build up a repertoire of high-quality tools for upcoming analyses. 

You can read the article here.

TRON is delighted to announce an article published in Oncoimmunology.  TRON co-author Nadja Salomon shares this Author’s Comment.

HPV16 infections are associated with a variety of cancers and there is compelling evidence that the transforming activity of HPV16 critically depends on the expression of the viral oncoproteins E6 and E7. Therapeutic cancer vaccines capable of generating durable and specific immunity against these HPV16 antigens hold great promise to achieve long-term disease control in HPV16-positive head and neck or cervical cancers.

In this article, we report the pre-clinical development of HPV16 vaccines based on our collaboration partner BioNTech’s RNA-LPX platform. We describe the design, inflammatory profile, subsequent T cell priming and anti-tumoral effects of the HPV16 E7 RNA-LPX vaccine in naïve or HPV16-positive TC-1 and C3 tumor-bearing C57BL76 mice. We report potent anti-tumoral effects by HPV16 RNA-LPX alone or in combination with an anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor. Together, these findings prompted the investigation of an HPV16 E6/E7 vaccine in a phase I trial in HPV-driven squamous cell carcinomas (NCT03418480).

The investigation of RNA-based HPV vaccines was initially started in the context of the EU project “IACT”. I am enthusiastic to see how the vaccine performs in the clinic, specifically whether potent anti-tumoral immunity is induced by HPV16 E6/E7 RNA-LPX against prevailing neoplasia.

You can read the article here.

At the Healthcare Hackathon at the University Medical Center Mainz, experts from the field of healthcare met with startups, programmers, and industry partners. In interdisciplinary mixed teams, technology-based solutions were developed for practical challenges in hospitals and care. For TRON, Jonas Ibn-Salem participated in the hackathon and worked with experts from IBM, Garmin, BioNTech and the University of Medicine on improved aftercare after hip and knee surgery. Using data from Smart-Watches, motion profiles of patients were created to help physicians, therapists and the patients themselves objectively monitor recovery. The team qualified for a continuation of the work at another Healthcare Hackathon in September in Berlin.

More information is available on the organizer's website.

At the annual meeting of the Association for Cancer Immunotherapy (CIMT) in 2019, six scientists received the CIMT Poster Award. Thomas Rösler, a scientist from TRON, won the prize in the category 'Therapeutic Vaccination' for his work 'Modelling immunogenicity with omics data integration' (Abstract 37). He presented his algorithm TOPAZ, which defines candidates for cancer immunotherapy. Potential HLA class I and class II peptides based on mutated antigens are predicted.

We congratulate Thomas and all other award winners. Further information can be found at meeting.cimt.eu