2016 Lung Cancer Research Foundation Annual Grant Program
Joshua Veatch, MD, PhD
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Research Project:
A new vaccine approach to induce T cell immune responses in lung cancer
Summary:
New drugs that enhance the function anti-tumor immune cells (T cells) have shown promise in treating lung cancer, but unfortunately most patients still do not respond to these drugs. A key reason these drugs fail is not enough of a T cell immune response against the cancer. While vaccines work well at preventing infectious disease, getting good T cell responses to tumors has been a challenge. This project seeks to develop a new vaccine approach that will induce better T cell responses against lung cancer.
It turns out that T cells themselves, when removed and modified to carry an antigen target, and given back to a patient, are good at inducing new T cells to attack that antigen. This project will develop an approach using T cells carrying cancer antigens (vaccine cells) to induce anti-cancer T cells to fight tumors in mouse models of lung cancer. As the best immune responses occur when antigen is combined with immune danger signals, this project will also test whether the addition of danger signals to the vaccine cells can lead to a better immune response and anti-cancer effect. The goal is to translate this approach to patients for the treatment of lung cancer.