Current Key Areas of Research

The Program in Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy brings together experts in the fields of immunobiology, medicine, and oncology to explore the interaction between the immune system and cancer.

Building on their findings, program members are advancing new strategies that use the exquisite specificity of the body's natural defenses to destroy tumors with minimal toxicity to healthy tissues.

Program researchers work between the lab and the clinic investigating the cellular arms of the immune system for new treatment opportunities. Their efforts are advancing the areas of:

1. Experimentations, including therapeutic treatments with chemically-modified peptide-based vaccines that enforce the tumor-bearing bearing animal’s immune defenses to attack the autologous/transplantable cancer cells.
   
2. Glucocorticoid-guided immune pathways on cytokine-dependent NK-cell activation and homeostasis.
   
3. NK cell-based adoptive therapies aiming at the involvement of innate immunity in cancer therapeutics directly but also indirectly at the interface of induction of adaptive antitumor immune responses.
   
4. The potential of small molecule inhibitors and other effector molecules as therapeutic agents in combination with peptide-based vaccines. 
   
5. Gene-regulation of mesenchymal cell differentiation and regulation of tumor cell growth within the tumor stroma.

Clinical Research

While there has been considerable success in decreasing overall cancer mortality rates through improved and earlier screening, there is a need for more sophisticated, targeted therapies that are able to specifically and effectively destroy cancer cells.

CIIC believes that clinical research in cancer cannot be considered as simply product development, but rather requires a systematic and academic approach to develop rational therapeutic strategies.

CIIC is currently exploring three therapeutic modalities.

1. Vaccinations with single hybrid peptides encompassing the active region of the regulatory part of the MHC class II – associated Invariant chain (Ii-Key) chemically linked to a long peptide from HER-2/neu (p776-790) (patented by Antigen Express Inc., a subsidiary of Generex Biotechnology Corporation) in collaboration with Antigen Express.
   
2. Vaccinations with multi long-peptide mixtures derived from various shared tumor antigens (in collaboration with several European Cancer Immunology Centers).
   
3. Adoptive therapy with cytokine-activated NK cells from HLA-mismatched donors.