Grant: Project Grant

Although the immune system is thought of as a defense against infections, immune cells can also recognize and kill cancer cells. The immune system has safeguards to prevent immune cells from attacking healthy tissues. Unfortunately, cancer cells take advantage of these safeguards to effectively "turn off" the anticancer immune response. Fortunately, immunotherapy is a new way of treating cancer that "turns on" the anticancer immune response. Despite long cancer remissions and some cures in a small percentage of patients, most patients do not respond. As a pathologist and immunologist, I study immune responses in human tumour tissues using a microscope. I label each cell or molecule of interest with a differently colored (fluorescent) marker and generate a digital image of all of the cells in the tumour (a technology called multiplex immunofluorescence). Using digital image analysis software, I convert these images into large databases that include each cell's position and measurement of each molecule. By comparing these "cellular maps" from tumours that do and do not respond to therapy, key cell types and molecules can be identified that predict how a patient will respond to treatment. I am teaming up with the Canadian Cancer Trials Group to study tumours from patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma who are receiving immunotherapy in a large clinical trial. The large number of patients and well-documented clinical data collected for the trial make this an amazing resource for researching the best way to predict who will respond to therapy. Pretreatment tumour tissue collected in the trial will be studied to develop clinical tests that will help doctors decide which immunotherapy drug is most likely to "turn on" a patient's immune response to treat and, hopefully, cure their mesothelioma. This research bridges a critical gap in converting exciting scientific discoveries into improvements in clinical care for patients.