Grant: Project Grant

Lung cancer is a deadly disease and new treatments are needed to improve patient outcomes. Lung cancers use specific biological mechanisms to promote their growth and survival. One of these mechanisms, called immune escape, involves cancer cells actively turning off immune cells so that the immune system does not destroy them. The goal of "immunotherapies" is to block immune escape mechanisms to help the immune system kill tumors. CD47 is a protein that lung tumors use to block the immune system from killing them. Research suggests that immunotherapies that block CD47, referred to as "CD47 blockade", could be effective in lung cancer. Yet, CD47 blockade has not worked well in patients in clinical trials. This difference in the anti-cancer effects of CD47 blockade in the laboratory and the clinic indicates more research is needed to understand how to use CD47 blockade effectively. The goal of our project is to develop a new way to make CD47 blockade work better in lung cancer patients. We have devised a strategy that uses viruses to deliver CD47 blockade to lung tumor tissues so that it works better with fewer toxic side effects. We will test these viruses in different lung cancer models to determine whether they effectively kill lung tumors. We will also conduct studies to understand how cancer cells and the immune system respond to our virus therapy. These studies will inform strategies to refine the virus to enhance their ability to kill lung tumors. Our research will establish a new way to unleash and maximize the efficacy of CD47 blockade in lung cancer. This will advance the development of CD47 blockade so that it can be used to treat lung cancer patients who cannot be treated with currently approved immunotherapies. As such, the results of our work could positively impact thousands of lung cancer patients in Canada and worldwide each year by providing a new and effective treatment option.