Cancer immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that uses the body’s immune system to prevent, control, and eliminate cancer, and it’s become a popular method. But it often fails to cure patients, as the cancer cells can sidestep and inhibit the body’s anti-tumor response.
Now, however, a team at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) believes it can improve the treatment — and it’s received a multimillion-dollar grant to do so.
According to a press release, a UTHSC-led group has received a $3.16 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), to develop a drug that boosts the immune system response in cancer patients, so it can destroy tumor cells. Gabor Tigyi, Ph.D., the Harriet Van Vleet Endowment Professor in the Department of Physiology is the lead investigator on the project; and Sue Chin Lee, Ph.D., another professor in the department, is a principal investigator.
Tigyi and Lee have identified a key inhibitor of cytotoxic T cell activation, which, put simply, means that they’ve found something that prevents the cells from doing their jobs. And this is important, because a job of these cytotoxic T cells is to kill dangerous cancer cells. After finding the inhibitor, the pair has worked with Corinne Augelli-Szafran, VP of scientific platforms at Birmingham-based Southern Research, to develop drug candidates that could solve this issue. Raul Torres, Ph.D., a professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Colorado, has shown the candidates can be effective.
Lee provided data that was crucial for the project’s initial grant application; and she gathered it with help from a $50,000 CORNET award received in 2018 — part of a competitive intramural grant program funded by UTHSC, which promotes new lines of interdisciplinary team study. The grant has bolstered the partnership between UTHSC and Southern Research, and led to the big award from the National Cancer Institute.
‘“The development of a relationship between UTHSC and Southern Research, exemplified by our joint CORNET awards, has been an exceptionally important step in developing the drug discovery and development pipeline at UTHSC,” said Steve Goodman, Ph.D., UTHSC’s vice chancellor for Research, in the release.
Awards like these are nothing new for UTHSC.
According to MBJ research, the institution received $126.6 million in research grants and contracts in FY 2021, the second most in the Memphis area, behind only St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
