The study will demonstrate that this assay helps personalizing cancer therapies by tailoring them to immune patient features. The project will also take advantage of innovative and high-throughput techniques to define additional MDSC related biomarkers and, most importantly, to identify novel drugs for Myeloid-derived Suppressor Cells (MDSC) blocking in predisposed patients. Finally,it will perform the first survey assessing the link between MDSC and perceived social isolation, an emerging western social problem recently shown to cause myeloid cell dysfunction and immunosuppression though neuroendocrine circuits. Globally, the Serpentine proposal has the ambitious goal to translate into the clinical oncological practise the use of MDSC quantification as a tool for the systematic assessment of systemic immunosuppression, providing at the same time operational insights into the strategies to overcome this pillar mechanism of cancer progression.
The Serpentine (Stratify cancER PatiENTs by ImmuNosupprEssion) project, represents the most consistent effort so far attempted to translate MDSC into clinical practise by producing an off-the-shelf compliant assay for quantifying these cells in peripheral blood.