Carlos-Filipe Pereira
Empowering Cancer Immunotherapy with Cellular Reprogramming
Abstract
Immunotherapy leads to long-term survival of cancer patients, yet generalized success has been hampered by insufficient antigen presentation and exclusion of immunogenic cells from the tumor microenvironment. We have developed an approach to reprogram tumor cells in vivo by adenoviral delivery of the transcription factors PU.1, IRF8, and BATF3, which enabled them to present antigens as type 1 conventional dendritic cells.
Reprogrammed tumor cells remodeled their tumor microenvironment, recruited, and expanded polyclonal cytotoxic T cells, induced complete tumor regressions, and established long-term systemic immunity in different mouse melanoma models. In human tumor spheroids and xenografts, reprogramming to immunogenic dendritic-like cells progressed independently of immunosuppression, which usually limits immunotherapy. Our studies paves the way for first-in-human trials and other applications of immune cell reprogramming in vivo.
Biography/Link
Carlos-Filipe Pereira, Ph.D. is a Professor of Molecular Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at Lund University in Sweden. Dr. Pereira is recognized for his work at the interface of cellular reprogramming and immunology and for fostering development of reprogramming-based immunotherapies.
For the last 20 years he has contributed to the fields of cellular reprogramming and hematopoietic specification. Dr. Pereira received his Ph.D. at Imperial College London where he established cell fusion and heterokaryons to study mechanisms of reprogramming towards pluripotency. During his postdoctoral training at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, he brought cellular reprogramming concepts to hematopoeisis for the first time. Dr. Pereira started his independent group at Lund University in 2017 and has uncovered new mechanisms underlying hematopoietic reprogramming and definitive hematopoiesis specification. He pioneered cellular reprogramming approaches in immunology by inducing dendritic cells from fibroblasts and cancer cells. This conceptual shift opened exciting opportunities to merge cellular reprogramming and cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Pereira co-founded Asgard Therapeutics, which received investment from leading European VCs to translate in vivo dendritic cell reprogramming to benefit cancer patients.
For his scientific accomplishments and innovation efforts, he received several notable scientific awards, including ERC Consolidator and Proof-of-Concept Grants, the Novo Nordisk Foundation Distinguished Innovator Grant and the entrepreneurship award from Mount Sinai-KiiLN. Dr. Pereira is a fellow of the Swedish Wallenberg program in Molecular Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cellular Reprogramming. He was also awarded the prestigious Swedish Fernström Prize and a medal of merit from his hometown in Portugal.