Lay summary
In Aotearoa New Zealand, 9 out of 10 lung cancer patients die within five years despite treatment, with the mortality rate for Māori being 3.5 times greater than for non-Māori. Following international trends, immunotherapy has emerged as an important new treatment modality, with new drugs becoming available that have been shown to induce remarkably durable responses in a proportion of patients with advanced disease. However, responders still remain in the minority and it is becoming increasingly clear effective immunotherapy requires a ‘hot’ inflamed tumour status. We have developed a prototype tumour targeted immuno-stimulator that converts ‘cold’ cancers into responsive ‘hot’ cancers using a New Zealand-invented prodrug technology now validated in human studies. We propose to develop and characterise this novel class of immune agonists and identify a lead candidate for clinical evaluation in New Zealand. Our vision for Aotearoa is to prevent as many deaths from lung cancer as possible.