With the opening of our second laboratory dedicated to Immunology, Frame became one of the new tenants of the New West Health & Innovation District (Hid), initiated by and part of Sanquin. The Sanquin organization is the only organization in the Netherlands authorized to manage our need for blood and blood products. They combine medical, diagnostic and scientific activities under the same roof.

With the launch of the Hid, Sanquin facilitates a know-how intensive campus that accommodates international scientists, pharmaceutical and biotech start- and scale-ups and other established companies in the field of oncology, immunology, hematology, and transfusion medicine. In this way, an eco-system that stimulates collaboration and innovation and the development of new generation treatments for patients is created.

Frame immunotherapies aim to improve response of the immune system to antigens present on cancer cells with the ultimate goal of destroying the tumor. To study how Frame immunotherapies induce immune responses against tumors, so-called in vitro models have to be established in which we will mimic ‘in a dish’ interactions between the immune cells and cancer cells. As immune cells can be isolated from blood, it is only natural we turned for our research on the immune system to the Sanquin organization, which not only provides direct access to blood products for our research but has also a long history of immunological research.

The Sanquin research facilities provide state-of-the art equipment needed for immunological research, such as several advanced flow cytometers and fully equipped labs for working with human blood and tumor cells. Being embedded as a part of the Hid allows us to benefit from this existing laboratory infrastructure and expertise in the field of immunology and oncology, providing the ideal conditions for further development of our immunotherapies.

Our immunology research in our brand-new laboratory will focus on validating of existing- and discovery of novel Frame-based immunotherapies. Immune cells from blood of healthy donors and patients with cancer will be used to assess immune response to Frame neoantigens. Also, ability of such immune cells to kill tumors carrying Frame mutations will be studied in more detail using various disease models. Additionally, we will further expand our in-house expertise supporting immunomonitoring activities during our planned and future clinical trials, where we assess the effect of Frame therapies on the immune system of cancer patients.

Altogether, with this fully functional Immunology Lab of Frame Therapeutics we have ideal conditions to accelerate our research programs and bring our personalized Frame-based immunotherapies as soon as possible to cancer patients.