Tag: #tumourimmunology

What lessons have been learnt?

Today is the final day of the Third International Cancer lmmunotherapy Conference. The meeting was run at the Rheingoldhalle Congress Center in Mainz/Frankfurt, Germany from September 6-9, 2017. More than 500 people attended this meeting.

The focus of the scientific program was on “Translating Science into Survival”. Talks covered the challenging areas in cancer immunology and immunotherapy. The full list of topics can be found in the meeting program.

At the moment cancer immunology and immunotherapy is a hot topic in the next generation of anti-cancer therapies. Lots of attention is given to checkpoint immunodrugs as it was proven by the prevalence of talks on this subject in the program. Indeed, this drug has great potential, but at the same time, it is not universal. About 50% of patients do not benefit from it.

What lessons have been learned from the talks:

  • Checkpoint immunotherapies are the main stream
  • Not all cancer patients would respond to immunodrug
  • Genetic landscape of a tumour and/or the patient may contribute to this, thus making beneficial to check genetics for this type of treatment
  • Immunodrugs work better in combination with conventional therapies such as chemotherapy.
  • The immune system can be tuned by a drug, but it will switch on compensatory mechanisms to balance the intervention.
  • Lots have to be studied further

 

Father of Chemotherapy and Cancer Immunology

I was giving a talk at Georg-Speyer-Haus Institute for Tumour Biology and Experimental Therapy yesterday. The aim of my visit was to establish collaboration with Prof Daniela Krause, who is the expert in bone marrow microenvironment and targeted therapies. She took me to the Institute museum that keeps the history of this place and phenomenal researchers used to work there.

This research institute was established in 1904 to support work of Paul Ehrlich, its first director and funded by the private foundation “Chemotherapeutisches Forschungsinstitut Georg-Speyer-Haus”. Paul Erlich is the Father of the chemotherapy concept originally developed to treat diseases of bacterial origin. He reasoned that there should be a chemical compound that can specifically target bacteria and stop its growth. He developed Salvarsan, the most effective drug for treatment of syphilis until penicillin came onto the market.

Paul Erlich is also known for his contribution to cancer research. He and his colleagues actively experimented on how tumour originates and spread. They also tried to understand how immune system can beat cancer applying vaccination concepts.

Paul Erlich’s Lab back then. Now it is a museum

Paul Erlich and Ilya Mechnikov were jointly awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his “work on immunity” in 1908.

 

The Nobel Prize Diploma