2015 Lung Cancer Research Foundation Annual Grant Program
Manish Patel, DO
University of Minnesota
Research Project:
Combination immune therapy and virus therapy for lung cancer
Summary:
Immune therapy has recently been shown to be superior to chemotherapy for non-small cell lung cancer, yet only 25% of patients respond. Dr. Patel’s research aims to improve upon this treatment by combination with vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), a live replicating virus. VSV engineered to express interferon-β (VSV-IFNβ) efficiently infects and kills lung cancer cells and lung tumors in mice. Recently, data from Dr. Patel’s lab revealed that VSV-IFNβ can cure mice with lung cancer by activating antitumor immunity. In this project, Dr. Patel and his team aim to study the mechanism by which VSV-IFNβ stimulates the immune system against the cancer and to develop novel strategies for combining VSV-IFNβ with established immune therapies for lung cancer. The team expects that the results of this project will lead to the first clinical trial of VSV-IFNβ for non-small cell lung cancer.