Enticed from the University of Oxford’s Department of Oncology to take up the fellowship, Iosifina Foskolou is an exceptional researcher into immunotherapy for blood cancers, including leukaemia and lymphoma. Iosifina’s field of study is T-cells, the white blood cells that play a central role in our immune response.

“Immunotherapy is a relatively new cancer treatment that strengthens the patient’s immune system and helps it to recognise, target and kill cancer cells. Cancer immunotherapy was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2018 because of its enormous potential to treat many different types of cancer.” 

“My research focuses on CAR T-cell immunotherapy. CAR stands for chimeric antigen receptor.  T-cells are good at fighting infection, but they can’t always tell the difference between healthy cells and cancer cells, and so the cancer cells can go unrecognised and hide away. In CAR T-cell therapy, certain T-cells are taken from patient’s blood and genetically engineered in the lab, then reintroduced into the patient. These modified cells specifically recognise and kill cancer cells. One of the challenges that CAR-T cell therapy currently faces is that the modified CAR T-cells don’t survive for very long. This means that if the cancer recurs, the CAR T-cells won’t be there to attack it. While CAR T-cells have been very successful in treating some blood cancers, it’s the long term patient survival rate that we are working to improve,” says Iosifina. 

“I am investigating one type of T-cell that holds a ‘memory’ of the cancer cell and can reactivate its response if it encounters that type of cell at a later date. My goal over my three-year fellowship is to find ways to keep the modified T-cells in this ‘memory’ state, so we can use them in immunotherapy and they will protect the patient for longer.”

When Professor Sir Patrick Sissons died in 2016, medical and academic circles came together to recognise his contribution with a lasting memorial in the form of a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Darwin College in the areas of immunology, inflammation and infectious disease. Funding has been granted by the Evelyn Trust for the first three years, beginning in October 2018.

If you’d like to read more about the exciting potential of this therapy, there’s a recent article here: The New Yorker: The promise and price of cellular therapies