Associate Professor Ian Hermans featured on One News last night talking about his team’s HRC-funded research into new “cell-based” anti-cancer vaccines.
It is known that white blood cells called T cells can kill tumour cells. Vaccines that induce the activity of T cells therefore hold considerable promise as new therapeutic agents. Associate Professor Hermans and his team at the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research are using cell-based vaccines in which synthetic fragments from tumour-associated proteins (tumour “peptides”) are loaded onto a patient’s own stimulatory blood cells, and then injected to induce peptide-specific T cells.
A clinical trial in melanoma patients is about to get underway to assess whether activity of these vaccines can be enhanced by including the synthetic stimulatory compound –galactosylceramide.
Watch Associate Professor Hermans talk about his anti-cancer vaccines on One News.