Vaccine Research
Group Leader: Dr Ian Hermans
The overall aim of the Vaccine Research group, is to apply the basic principles of immune cell biology to the design of more effective vaccines against diseases such as cancer. The cancer vaccines are created in a GMP laboratory from the patient's own immune system cells, and their cancer.
T cells with specificity for cancerous tissues need to be activated by specialised immune cells called dendritic cells in order to proliferate and migrate to the target tissue. The utility of using dendritic cells loaded with tumour antigens to stimulate immune responses to cancer was first demonstrated in animal studies in the late 1990s and the first dendritic cell vaccination study in cancer patients was published in 1996.
The development of methods for growing large numbers of dendritic cells for use in clinical studies has facilitated further phase I and II studies designed to analyse the toxicity and clinical efficacy of this approach. These studies, including our own non-Hodgkin's lymphoma Phase I/II clinical trial, have conclusively demonstrated the safety of using dendritic cell vaccines to treat cancer. More importantly, some significant clinical responses have now been observed.
Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are an excellent source of the signals required for optimal activation of dendritic cells and can thus influence anti-tumour T cell responses. We hope to improve T cell responses to tumours by exploiting the activity of these cells in our dendritic cell cancer vaccine design.
