Huge news for the dark proteome field! A global team led by Reuven Agami, Professor of Oncogenomics at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and one of the fifteen ORFeus principal investigators, has been awarded a Cancer Grand Challenges grant of up to $25 million to tackle the dark proteome in cancer.

The team, called ILLUMINE, will build a comprehensive atlas of the cancer dark proteome, mapping microproteins, mistranslated polypeptides and other non-canonical gene products across hard-to-treat cancers including leukemia, ovarian, lung, pancreatic and pediatric brain tumors. The central question: can these hidden proteins serve as universal tumor antigens, targets the immune system can recognize regardless of a patient’s mutational profile?

The ILLUMINE team includes ORFeus coordinator Sebastiaan van Heesch (Princess Máxima Center) and ORFeus interdisciplinary advisor John Prensner (University of Michigan), alongside researchers from the Whitehead Institute, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and others. Its focus on the therapeutic dark proteome is directly complementary to ORFeus, which trains the next generation of scientists to discover, characterize and translate the same biology. DC13, hosted at the Princess Máxima Center, will run alongside ILLUMINE as part of its research program.

Cancer Grand Challenges is co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute. This round is co-funded with the Cancer Research Institute and KiKa (Children Cancer Free Foundation). We could not be more excited to see the field gaining this kind of momentum.

ILLUMINE on Cancer Grand Challenges Reuven Agami Sebastiaan van Heesch