Immuno-theraTRACE® Oncology Screening
Uncover the Immunotherapeutic Potential of Your Compound
As the field of precision medicine advances, the demand for targeted and tumor-specific immune-modulating agents is increasing. Our oncology platform, immuno-theraTRACE®
, allows you to screen your immune-modulating agents for their therapeutic potential across a range of tumor types.
When you partner with Melior, you get the data you need to quickly and confidently determine which cancer type to advance your immunotherapy toward.
Harness the Power of the Immune System
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer treatment by leveraging T-cell-based antitumor immunity. However, to effectively evaluate an immunotherapeutic agent as an antitumor agent, you need to test it in the context of an intact immune system. By developing a study design incorporating multiple syngeneic mouse models, we can help you determine which tumor type your therapeutic candidate is most effective against.
“Cold tumors,” characterized by the absence of T-cell infiltration, show poor ICI response rates due to multiple mechanisms mediating T-cell exclusion. Several approaches have been shown to improve the efficacy of ICIs by “firing-up” cold tumors and driving T-cell infiltration1.
With Immuno-theraTRACE®, you can screen your immune-modulating agents, including ICIs, across various tumor types that range from hot to cold.
Leverage Custom-fit Study Designs Tailored to Your Objectives
Our agile team uses custom designs, short lead times, and transparency to get the answers you need, when you need them.
Custom study designs
High throughput mode: Simultaneously test multiple compounds in smaller groups of animals. Our studies reveal low standard deviations in tumor sizes, allowing for small group sizes and higher signal-to-noise ratios for accurately detecting therapeutic effects.
Lead candidate mode: Analyze multiple doses of a single compound within larger group sizes for more powerful results.
Short lead times
Get critical data sooner through our team of scientists who deliver results faster than most CROs.
Highly interactive project managers
Stay up-to-date with your study’s process at all times through our passionate, transparent project managers.
Maximize Your Study Findings with Complementary Data Sets
Get the most out of your study by integrating custom services and analyses. We help design your study and suggest additional opportunities for more robust data sets.
Some of our complementary services include:
- Tissue collection for immune cell analysis and profiling
- Whole blood, spleen, and lymph node analysis
- General observations
- Metabolic analyses
- Histology and IHC
- Pain analysis
- IVIS imaging
- PK studies
Looking for something else to complement your data set?
What to Expect When Working with Us
Our process is designed to give you the answers you’re looking for. When you work with us, we take the time to understand your project goals. From there we’ll work together to develop a study that balances your needs, budget, and timeline. Expect open lines of communication throughout the study execution, we avoid surprises and exceed expectations.
Our process
- Discovery: Let’s meet on Zoom to discuss your study request. Our experts will serve as consultants to make sure your research questions are properly addressed.
- Proposal: We’ll provide you with a bespoke study design customized to your specific questions, targets, and therapeutics.
- Revision: We’ll work together to revise the study proposal, to meet your needs, budget, and timelines.
- Execute: Our highly interactive project managers will keep you up-to-date throughout the study.
Are You Ready to Discover Your Compound's Immunotherapeutic Potential
Citations
- Liu YT, Sun ZJ. Turning cold tumors into hot tumors by improving T-cell infiltration. Theranostics. 2021;11(11):5365-5386. doi:10.7150/thno.58390.
Interested in learning more about theraTRACE®?
If you are interested in learning more about phenotypic screening and drug repositioning, please contact us to start the conversation today!
Frequently Asked Questions
immuno-theraTRACE® is Melior Discovery’s in vivo oncology screening platform for evaluating immune-modulating agents across a range of tumor types. It lets you screen an immunotherapy candidatemagainst multiple syngeneic mouse tumor models in a single, coordinated study design, so you can determine which cancer type your compound is most effective against before committing to a lead indication.
Immunotherapies must be tested in an intact, functional immune system to produce meaningful efficacy data, and syngeneic models provide exactly that. Because these models transplant mouse-derived tumor cells into a genetically matched (histocompatible) mouse strain, the tumor isn’t rejected on immune grounds and the animal retains a fully competent immune system. That matters for agents like checkpoint inhibitors, which work by leveraging T-cell–based antitumor immunity, a mechanism that simply can’t be evaluated in immunodeficient xenograft models bearing human tumors. Testing in syngeneic models is what makes it possible to see how your compound engages the immune response, not just the tumor.
“Hot” tumors contain abundant T cells and typically respond better to immunotherapy, while “cold” tumors have limited immune cell infiltration and are often resistant. Screening across both types helps identify where a therapy is most effective and whether it can convert cold tumors into immunologically active ones.
immuno-theraTRACE® is designed for immune-modulating agents, including immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and other immunotherapeutics whose mechanism depends on engaging the immune system. If your compound is intended to activate, redirect, or amplify an antitumor immune response, rather than acting through direct cytotoxicity alone, it’s a fit for the platform. Because study designs are fully bespoke, Melior’s scientists will work with you to confirm the right model set and readouts for your specific mechanism and target.
Both. immuno-theraTRACE® supports both high-throughput screening of multiple compounds and in-depth evaluation of a single lead candidate with dose-ranging studies.
Beyond efficacy, immuno-theraTRACE® studies can be paired with a range of complementary readouts to build a richer dataset from the same in vivo study. Options include tissue collection for immune cell analysis and profiling; whole blood, spleen, and lymph node analysis; histology and IHC; IVIS imaging; PK studies; metabolic analyses; general observations; and pain analysis. Melior helps design the study to fold in the endpoints that answer your mechanistic and translational questions, so you get more decision-ready data without running separate studies.
Projects follow four steps: Discovery, Proposal, Revision, and Execution. Melior’s leading scientists collaborate with your team to design a customized in vivo study, refine it to fit your goals and budget, and provide proactive project management throughout execution.
Both are Melior’s screening platforms, but they answer different questions. theraTRACE® screens a compound across 150+ validated disease models spanning 14 therapeutic areas to uncover unexpected new indications, it’s built for drug repositioning and indications discovery. immuno-theraTRACE® is the oncology-focused platform that screens immune-modulating agents across multiple syngeneic tumor models to pinpoint which cancer type your immunotherapy should advance toward. In short, theraTRACE® finds where a compound might work across disease; immuno-theraTRACE® finds which tumor an immunotherapy works against.
