In recent years, the increasing commitment of TLS to in-house research has produced a significant growth of the scientific contribution of the foundation’s researchers
Molecular Immunology and Translational Oncology (MITO) Lab
The Molecular Immunology and Translational Oncology (MITO) laboratory, led by Dr. Anna Kabanova, was established in 2019 with the support of the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC). The MITO team investigates B-cell biology in health and disease, leveraging these insights to disrupt metabolic vulnerabilities in leukemia and engineer synthetic cell and antibody-based therapies.
Targetting B cell metabolism in CLL
The MITO team studies B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) – one of the most common B-lymphocyte tumors – which remains incurable. Initially supported by AIRC and by the consortium HEAL ITALIA, this project aims at dissecting metabolic vulnerabilities of CLL cells. The team combines state-of-the-art imaging, -omics and gene editing approaches on human and murine CLL cells – in vitro and in vivo – to identify genes and mechanisms that regulate CLL cell proliferation and fitness. Results of this study may allow a better understanding of the biology of this disease and form the rationale for the development of novel therapeutic approaches to treat aggressive CLL and Richter’s Syndrome.
Synthetic cells to fight B cell tumours
Owing to experience in studying how T cells kill tumour B cells, the team is taking part in the pan-EU consortium project “Bottom-up manufacturing of artificial T cells” ArTCell supported by the European Innovation Council. ArTcell aims to provide a scalable, on-demand artificial T cell substitute of traditional CAR T cell therapy. The TUMI collaborates with a multi-disciplinary team of bioengineers and T/B cell biologists from the University of Leuven in Belgium, the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, and Mossakowski Medical research Institute in Warsaw, Poland.
B cells as weapons against antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
The team has contributed to the isolation and characterization of anti-pathogen B cell responses to develop monoclonal antibodies as treatments against multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae.
Research Group:
Molecular Immunology and Translational Oncology (MITO) laboratory Principal Investigator: Anna Kabanova