Plant virus-like particles / immunotherapy

The aim of the project is to establish a test system for plant virus-like particles as potent cancer immunotherapy agents. We will prepare at least ten plant virus-like particles both icosahedral and filamentous and test them in mouse breast cancer and melanoma models as in situ vaccines. The effects of plant VLPs on cancer progression will be evaluated by measurements of tumor size as well by registering of changes in cytokine production and activation of different immune cells. The plant VLPs able to reduce the progression of cancer will be further analysed in cell model systems. We will evaluate the macrophage activation after stimulation with plant VLPs by comparing secreted cytokines. Additionally, we will cocultivate mouse breast cancer and melanoma cells and mouse macrophages and analyse the cancer cell death after stimulation with plant VLPs. We expect that data obtained from cancer model experiments will correlate with data from cell culture, allowing to use cell-based methods in large-scale screening of in situ vaccine candidates in future and reduce the number of necessary animal experiments. The project will generate research data relevant to the project objectives. The data will include experimental measurements , observational data and secondary datasets, collected and analysed during the project implementation. Data formats will include standard, widely used file formats such as XLSX, TXT, PDF, and specific formats where appropriate. The estimated volume of data is moderate and manageable within institutional storage infrastructure.