NIH VideoCast - The Immune System in Childhood Cancer: Mobilizing the Troops

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The Immune System in Childhood Cancer: Mobilizing the Troops

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Air date:	Wednesday, February 25, 2015, 3:00:00 PM Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local
Views:	Total views: 326 (100 Live, 226 On-demand)
Category:	WALS - Wednesday Afternoon Lectures
Runtime:	01:05:11
Closed captioning:	Check box to display CC outside of the video Note: You can drag the captioning window around and resize it
Description:	Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series The Annual G. Burroughs Mider Lecture The promise of treating cancer with the host's own immune system has long held allure for scientists and physicians, but successes have been modest and inconsistent until recently. For the past two decades, Dr. Mackall's research has focused on developing immune-based therapies for childhood cancer. She began by describing the impact of standard cancer therapies on T-cell homeostasis and identifying factors that limit T-cell restoration in children and adults. This work has elucidated powerful homeostatic mechanisms that support T-cell expansion when lymphocyte numbers are reduced, thus opening the window for adoptive T-cell therapies for cancer. Recent advances in genetic engineering have allowed Dr. Mackall's laboratory and others to rapidly and reproducibly generate large numbers of tumor-specific T cells for adoptive transfer. Using this approach to target CD19 has proven highly effective against B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer of childhood, but has revealed several limitations. First, antigen-loss immune escape can result when immune responses are restricted to one antigen and likely necessitates multivalent approaches to adoptive T-cell therapy. Second, her lab has identified T-cell exhaustion as a primary factor limiting the effectiveness of adoptive cellular therapies. Exhaustion can occur as a result of high tumor burdens but is also induced in T cells bearing non-native receptors due to tonic, antigen-independent signaling. Work is underway to engineer receptors that do not tonically signal and to develop novel approaches to prevent or reverse this exhaustion. Dr. Mackall predicts that her lab’s work will further improve the efficacy of emerging adoptive cellular therapies for cancer. For more information go to http://wals.od.nih.gov

NLM Title:	The immune system in childhood cancer : mobilizing the troops / Dr. Crystal Mackall.
Author:	Mackall, Crystal. National Institutes of Health (U.S.),
Publisher:
Abstract:	(CIT): The promise of treating cancer with the host's own immune system has long held allure for scientists and physicians, but successes have been modest and inconsistent until recently. For the past two decades, Dr. Mackall's research has focused on developing immune-based therapies for childhood cancer. She began by describing the impact of standard cancer therapies on T-cell homeostasis and identifying factors that limit T-cell restoration in children and adults. This work has elucidated powerful homeostatic mechanisms that support T-cell expansion when lymphocyte numbers are reduced, thus opening the window for adoptive T-cell therapies for cancer. Recent advances in genetic engineering have allowed Dr. Mackall's laboratory and others to rapidly and reproducibly generate large numbers of tumor-specific T cells for adoptive transfer. Using this approach to target CD19 has proven highly effective against B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer of childhood, but has revealed several limitations. First, antigen-loss immune escape can result when immune responses are restricted to one antigen and likely necessitates multivalent approaches to adoptive T-cell therapy. Second, her lab has identified T-cell exhaustion as a primary factor limiting the effectiveness of adoptive cellular therapies. Exhaustion can occur as a result of high tumor burdens but is also induced in T cells bearing non-native receptors due to tonic, antigen-independent signaling. Work is underway to engineer receptors that do not tonically signal and to develop novel approaches to prevent or reverse this exhaustion. Dr. Mackall predicts that her lab"s work will further improve the efficacy of emerging adoptive cellular therapies for cancer.
Subjects:	Child Immunotherapy--methods Neoplasms--immunology Neoplasms--therapy
Publication Types:	Lecture Webcast

NLM Classification:	QZ 275
NLM ID:	101654015
CIT Live ID:	15732
Permanent link:	https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=15732

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