Cancer Grand Challenges is founded by the two largest funders of cancer research in the world - Cancer Research UK and National Cancer Institute, NIH, US. The goal of this funding is to back world-class, multidisciplinary teams to come together, think differently and make radical progress against cancer.
The task of MATCHMAKERS is to decipher the T-cell receptor recognition code. Understanding and predicting how T cells recognize tumors can pave the way for new personalized immunotherapies. They aim for solving TCR recognition and design via integrated high-throughput screening, structural, functional and computational approaches.
The team lead is Associate Prof Michael Birnbaum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US. Other team members: Johanna Olweus, Oslo University Hospital and University of Oslo (NO), Prof Sergio Quezada, University College London (UK), Prof Ton Schumacher, Netherlands Cancer Institute (NL), Prof Dirk Busch, Technische Universität München (DL), Dr. David Baker, University of Washington (US), Prof Regina Barzilay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Dr. Peter Bruno, University of California San Fransisco (US), Dr Nik Sgourakis, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (US), Dr. Brandon DeKosky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US), Prof Stephen Elledge, Harvard Medical School (US), and Prof Christopher Garcia, Stanford University (US).
Other relevant links:
NRK Dagsrevyen, March 29 2024, (10:44 into the broadcast):
Oslo University hospital:
- Institute for Cancer Research
- Johanna Olweus and the MATCHMAKERS
- Johanna Olweus & The Matchmakers SHORTS
Cancer Grand Challenges
- Home page
- Five new teams
- MATCHMAKERS. Challenge: Decipher the T-cell receptor cancer-recognition code
University of Oslo