Roswell Park Researcher Receives $1.2 Million To Study Cancer Immunology

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Immune System / Vaccines
Article Date: 10 Jul 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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Peter Demant, MD, PhD, Distinguished Member, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), has been awarded a four-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to evaluate how an individual's genes impact his/her immune response to cancer.

Dr. Demant and his RPCI colleagues recently mapped novel genes that determine the intensity of the immune response to cancer in each patient. The NCI grant will allow the researchers to expand upon this work and improve the understanding of the function of these genes. The research will open the way to the manipulation of the pathways regulated by cells so that the body's own immune defenses can be specifically augmented.

Dr. Demant explains that when cancer arises and begins to progress in the body, it encounters several types of cells in the immune system. This defense system may recognize the cancer cells as foreign and attack them, often destroying early cancers before they can reach a clinically detectable stage. However, the efficiency of the immune system in invading the cancer varies among patients.

Attempts to bolster the immune system to destroy cancer have focused on vaccines and studying how immune cells leave the blood circulation and enter tumors. Both approaches have yielded important information, but neither has provided a workable solution to the problem of failure of immune cells to invade the cancer.

Dr. Demant's research team applied a new strategy. "We wanted to know why the immune cells in some patients migrate into the tumors, and why in others they do not," said Dr. Demant. "Our hypothesis was that it is the genes of each individual that determine the intensity of each individual's immune response."

Laboratory studies led the researchers to a novel group of genes that have not, until now, been known to play a role in the defense against cancer. "These novel genes," notes Demant, "have great potential in assessing the prognosis of each patient and the probability that the immune cells will be able to invade the cancer.

"Until now, the ability of immune cells to infiltrate cancer could be assessed only from tumor tissue obtained after surgery or biopsy," he continued. "With this new method, an assessment could be made of the likelihood of patient's lymphocytes to infiltrate tumor just by genotyping patient's DNA from blood or other normal tissue . This would help physicians choose the optimal treatment for each patient and avoid treatments that will not likely work."

Roswell Park Cancer Institute, founded in 1898, is the nation's first cancer research, treatment and education center. The Institute was one of the first cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center and remains the only facility with this designation in Upstate New York. RPCI is a member of the prestigious National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of the nation's leading cancer centers; maintains affiliate sites; and is a partner in national and international collaborative programs.

Roswell Park Cancer Institute