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Adoptive Cell Therapy Project Gains EIT Gold Grant Award

An innovative adoptive cell therapy that may treat cancer has garnered Johannes Breuning from Marion H Brown’s group a gold grant award in the EIT health Doctoral Transition Innovation Fellowship competition in London on 8 September 2016.

One of six winning projects, Johannes’ project concerning modified chimeric antigen receptors for cancer immunotherapy, also grabbed the attention of Oxford University Innovation for its commercial potential with a priority patent already filed.

Expressing his pride in the award Johannes said:  “I am honoured that my basic research in cancer immunotherapy impressed the EIT panel. The grant will help provide funds to test my idea in vitro and in vivo. If can confirm that it works it should pave the way to more effective treatment of cancer patients.”

Dr Robert Fishleigh, Senior Technology Transfer Manger, Oxford University Innovation Ltd (OUI), said: “I was delighted to hear that Johannes secured an EIT Health Gold Award, not least because I supported him in his application from the OUI side and I am working with him and his supervisor on the patenting and subsequent commercilisation of the technology with industrial partners through OUI.”

In its inaugural year the EIT health Doctoral Transition Innovation Fellowship competition aims to offer the brightest students the chance to become innovators and accelerate market entry of healthcare advances. The awards programme is ran in collaboration with the University of Oxford and Imperial College London.