Research: Centre for Immune and Targeted Therapy

Our Projects

Our Immune-based treatment options

Gamma Delta T-cells

Cytotoxic T cells are the part of the immune system that can recognize and kill the body’s own cells when virally infected or cancerous.  Gamma-delta T cells (GDT) are a small subpopulation of T cells found in the blood. These    cells have been found to be particularly successful in recognizing and targeting tumour cells. At CITT we are employing this as a cancer therapy strategy, by growing and expanding patients’ own GDTs for transfusion to the patient. This is a picture of a GDT cell clusters as they grow in the laboratory before being reinfused back into the patient. Transferred back topatients, gamma delta T cells have shown success in treating cancers in combination with chemo and other therapies.

Dendritic Cell Vaccination

Dendritic cells are the “professional antigen presenting” cells of the immune system. They are crucial for their role in recognizing foreign or tumor antigens and presenting them to T-cells for recognition, to mature T-cells for activation. Dendritic cells are effective in cancer therapy when primed with tumor antigens for presentation to the immune system, thus activating the immune system to fight the cancer. At CITT, dendritic cell “vaccines” are created by growing dendritic cells from patients’ blood ex vivo in the lab, then artificially maturing them with antigens from their own tumor specimens. Our research into investigating better strategies for culturing and priming dendritic cells has refined this maturation process (2).  Transferred back into the patient these dendritic cells become “vaccines” to activate patients’ immune systems against the tumor.

Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes

Tumor infiltrating lymphocytes or TIL’s are a particular kind of cytotoxic T-cell found within and surrounding tumors, already primed and activated towards fighting the cancer.  Higher levels of TILs have long been correlated with positive prognosis for cancers. Recently they have shown promising results in treating cancer when grown ex vivo and transferred back to patients. Specifically, TIL therapy has had a response rate of 50-70% of treated patients with metastatic melanoma (1). At CITT we have begun the initiative of expanding TILs from patients similarly to GDTs, while investigating and developing strategies for improved effectiveness in expanding these cells.  The picture is a micrograph of a cancer cell in the center being attacked and destroyed by TILs. Improving these methods and initiating TIL therapy provides an exciting new approach for treating difficult cases of melanoma and other cancers at CITT.

References

1. Hershkovitz, L; Schachter, J; Treves, AJ; Besser, MJ. (2010) Focus on Adoptive T Cell Transfer Trials in Melanoma. Clin Dev Immunol 2010:260267

2. Takahara, M; Miyai, M; Tomiyama, M; Mutou, M; Nicol, AJ; Nieda, M. (2008) Co-pulsing tumor antigen pulsed dendrictic cells with zoledronate efficiently enhance the expansion of tumor antigen-specific CD8+ T cells via Vy9yo T cell activation. Journal of Leukocyte Biology 83(3):742-54.