Grant: Joint Canada-Israel Health Research Program

The goal of this project is to improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy. Chemotherapy is the main form of treatment for cancer but cannot cure most types of cancer. Immunotherapy is another form of treatment that tries to stimulate cells of the body's immune system, called T cells, to kill cancer cells. Unfortunately, cancers may become resistant to T cells in the same way they learn to resist chemotherapy. This resistance is due largely to cytokines and other factors that are associated with cancer called checkpoint inhibitors that suppress the immune system. Dr. Spaner's group in Canada has found that cytokines called type 1 interferons, which help prevent cancers from developing, serve to suppress the immune system and support the growth of cancer cells once they have developed. Dr. Schreiber's group in Israel has developed methods to study how interferon is having these effects and new drugs to counter the negative effect of interferon . In this project, Dr. Spaner and Dr. Schreiber will try to learn more about how interferon suppresses T cells and if using drugs that prevent interferon from acting on cancer cells can be a safe and effective way to improve immunotherapy. They will study cancer cells from patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), the most common leukemia in the developed world, as it is easy to obtain large numbers of tumor cells for experiments, unlike most other cancers. The results of this project are expected to justify using Interferon-signaling inhibitors to treat CLL. This approach is expected to increase cure rates with immunotherapy in CLL and also many other forms of cancer.