Eilon Sherman, PhD

About the Investigator:

Prof. Eilon Sherman is an associate Professor and PI at the Hebrew University, and the director of a Minerva center. He is an established leader in biophysics, with an interdisciplinary background, and expertise in the pioneering, development and application of super resolution microscopy to study signaling in multiple cell types, esp. in T cells and in cancer cells.

About the Research:

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers affecting women worldwide, though it can also occur in men. Early detection through screening methods such as mammography and advances in treatments, including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and targeted therapies, have significantly improved outcomes. Current treatments, including surgical, chemotherapy and immunotherapic strategies have improved long-term outcomes, but their benefit remains very limited. Thus, additional strategies for treatment are urgently needed.

T cells expressing chimeric antigen receptors (CAR-Ts) are an emerging tool for cancer treatment, and hold the promise for treatment of a wide variety of cancers and other diseases. Indeed, adoptive immunotherapy of CAR-Ts is currently under preclinical and clinical testing for treating mainly blood cancers. Unfortunately, CAR-Ts are still not available for treating solid cancers, and still suffer from grave side effects, limited efficay (esp. against solid tumors), cell exhaustion and senecence, long production time, and a prohibitively high cost, at ~$1Million per treatment.

Here, I propose to develop a novel framework that will enable optimal design of CARs that target a common marker of breast cancers, called HER2. The framework will include new experimental data from an in-depth and systematic biophysical study, integrative and predictive modelling of CAR signaling. The study will be based on super-resolution imaging of the synapse between CAR-Ts and target cancer cells and with patient-derived tumor organoids. The combination of the propopsed techniques will allow to improve on CAR design in terms of their cancer-related functions, such as efficacy, safety and infiltration capacity.