Beginning in 2025, LMSRF has committed to underwrite the costs at ICR and The Royal Marsden for an initial 2½ year period to use a combination of data science, AI and pathology expertise to analyse The Royal Marsden Hospital’s catalogue of existing and new LMS records and pathology samples.  We expect this unique record, combined with the use of AI and data science expertise, to be the basis from which we build research to discover new biomarkers, define LMS molecular sub-types, characterise disease and immune pathways, and identify new drug targets.

Our initial investment in the LMS Pathology and Data Project is to test the effectiveness of this approach.  We will expand the project with further investment and seek additional external financial backing if early milestone achievement is as promising as we expect it to be.

LMSRF, with the additional support of another private charitable trust, is actively investigating the set-up of an innovative small cohort-based investigator-led study using intra-lesional autologous cell therapy for LMS patients.  The study is the brainchild of LMRSF’s Scientific Advisory Board which has extensive experience of sarcoma, LMS and immunotherapy.

Beginning in January 2024, LMSRF commissioned Dr Sizun Jiang’s lab at Harvard Med School to build a spatial proteomics framework to study the tumor microenvironment in LMS. Using data and tissue from LMS patients in the US and UK, a unique resource and a number of important biological insights have been made. The next phase of work is now being planned, with the goal to deliver a comprehensive, systems-level understanding of the LMS microenvironment that we hope will lead to identification of biomarkers and the design of rational immunomodulatory strategies.

Personalised neoantigen vaccines, especially those based on using the latest long read DNA sequencing techniques which are now available, are increasingly being recognised as potentially valuable tools in the personalised treatment and prevention of recurrence in cancer. LMSRF’s team has begun a pilot project.

Separately, we are also piloting ctDNA (circulating tumor DNA) and MRD (Minimal Residual Disease) programs to gauge their usefulness in treating LMS.