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Immunology's Role in the Fight Against Cancer | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

3,249 views · Published 30 May 2014 · 2:51 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute · 2014 · Science & Technology

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For more information on Cancer Immunology and AIDS at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute visit http://www.dana-farber.org/Research/Departments-and-Centers/Department-of-Cancer-Immunology-and-AIDS.aspx

Kai W. Wucherpfennig, MD, PhD, Co-chair of the Department of Immunology and AIDS at Dana-Farber, describes how immunology research contributes to the fight against cancer and the development of new and promising cancer treatments for patients.


Transcription:


Text: How does immunology contribute to the fight against cancer?

Dr. Wucherpfennig: Cancer immunology is now one of the most exciting areas of oncology. The reason is that recent clinical trials at the Dana-Farber and elsewhere have shown very substantial benefit in patients with cancer. What is most exciting is that therapeutic benefit can be durable for years or even decades in patients with advanced cancer. This is a unique aspect in oncology. What is also exciting is that immunotherapies can work in a variety of different cancer—not only in melanoma, a field that has been studied for a long time by immunology, but also in lung cancer, which was a cancer that had been considered resistant to immunotherapy for long periods of time. So, we’re making [new roads 00:59] in many different kinds of cancers using approaches that are firmly grounded on the basic understanding of how the immune system is regulated.

Text: What does your department do?

Dr. Wucherpfennig: Our department performs basic research on how the immune system functions. The immune system is a mobile army composed of many differentiated cell types that very closely interact to affect an immune response. This complexity of immune system function actually provides many different targets for therapeutic intervention. We are using the basic insights that we have gained to develop new strategies for cancer immunotherapy in close collaboration with our clinical colleagues at Dana-Farber.

Text: What are you most excited about?

Dr. Wucherpfennig: I love immunology, because it offers an opportunity to do fascinating science, but also even more importantly, the opportunity to use what we have learned in the lab to advance the treatment of cancer patients. A project that I’m particularly excited about is that we’ve developed a therapeutic antibody which we actually isolated from a patient who had received immunotherapy at the Dana-Farber. This antibody has amazing activity in animal models, and it’s being advanced to a clinical trial at the Dana-Farber in close collaboration with one of my colleagues, and it’s these kinds of projects that get me excited in the morning to come to the lab and to do something that will help us to learn more about immunology and to advance the field of cancer immunotherapy.

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