INCITE Project

The Horizon2020 project INCITE, which stands for Immune Niches for Cancer ImmunoTherapy Enhancement, received 4 million EUR from the EU Horizon 2020 Future & Emerging Technologies Open funding platform, now part of the EIC Pathfinder umbrella.
EIC Pathfinder supports the early stages of the science and technology research and innovation around new ideas towards radically new future technologies, in all scientific fields.

The INCITE project aims to improve current approaches for cancer immunotherapy by generating more robust and active memory phenotypes of anti-cancer T cells, such as CAR-T or TCR- transgenic T cells.

We will achieve this through construction of a microenvironment – a so-called “immune niche” that keeps anti-cancer T cells strong, vigilant and persistent both during preparation of the cells outside the body, and after being returned to patients.

We will investigate and – as far as possible – replicate the microenvironment of the niches that provides the most potent T-cells for eradicating the cancer.

INCITE is a multidisciplinary project that combines competences in microfluidic modelling and 3D printing, basic molecular cell immunology, tissue engineering, bioinformatics, experimental and translational cancer immunotherapy and together with communication experts we will embark on the ambition of transforming cell mediated immunotherapy of cancers for the future.

We have gathered the necessary competences from Norway, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Netherlands, mostly from academic institutions but also including a recent Austrian start-up assembling a new class of 3D printers.