The overall goal of CAP-IT Center for LNP RNA Immunoprevention (CRI) is to pre-clinically delineate, formulate and validate liponanoparticle RNA (LNP RNA) vaccines for precision prevention of individuals with increased cancer risk.
To attain these objectives, cutting-edge technologies will be employed, encompassing LNP RNA vaccine formulation, computational genomic tumor immunology, spatial genomics, and immunopeptidomics.
The CAP-IT CRI will develop state-of-the-art LNP RNA immunoprevention and immune interception vaccines and provide a technologically powerful platform to jumpstart additional CAP-IT CRI LNP RNA vaccine projects. It is anticipated that CAP-IT CRI will propel both Lynch syndrome and lung non-solid nodules (NSN) vaccines to NCI PREVENT and CP-CTNET clinical trials within the next 5 years and FDA approval/clinical translation within ten years.
CAP-IT CRI has assembled a collaborative team of scientists and researchers from various institutions, such as Weill Cornell Medicine, DKFZ (German Cancer Research Center), Sloan Kettering Institute, Cornell Engineering, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Broad Institute.
To ensure CAP-IT CRI's scientific rigor and excellence, a scientifically outstanding External Advisory Board (EAB) has been assembled, which includes 2023 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Dr. Drew Weissman (University of Pennsylvania) for his work on LNP RNA COVID19 vaccines
There are two projects underway at CAP-IT CRI.
Project 1 will develop and validate an LNP RNA immunoprevention vaccine for Lynch syndrome, a genetic cancer predisposition syndrome with highly immunogenic recurrent neoantigens shared among cancers from different patients.
Project 2 will develop and validate an LNP RNA immune interception vaccine for patients with lung non-solid nodule (NSN) pre-malignant neoplasms, a lung adenocarcinoma precursor lesion.
The Principal Investigators of the CAP-IT CRI are Drs. Steven Lipkin, Nasser Khaled Altorki, Timothy McGraw and Vivek Mittal.
