Cassian Yee, MD – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Brad Nelson, PhD – British Columbia Cancer Agency

The goal of this project is to reduce tumor burden and prevent disease progression using adoptive T-cell therapy.  Specifically, project investigators aim to evaluate the safety and persistence of adoptively transferred NY-ESO-1-specific CD8+ T cell clones administered alone or with the addition of helper CD4+ T cells for the treatment of patients with advanced ovarian cancer in a Phase I clinical trial. Investigators will also evaluate the clinical and immunobiological anti-tumor response of adoptively transferred NY-ESO-1-specific T cells and will determine the feasibility of generating antigen specific, CD8+ and CD4+ T cells targeting ovarian antigens previously identified by serological recombinant expression cloning (SEREX).

This project follows our general strategy for achieving translational research goals, which includes 1) exploitation of emerging molecular technologies, in this case SEREX, to identify biologically relevant antigens as candidate targets for translation, 2) a systematic approach to prioritizing targets for evaluation, and 3) a collaborative approach to evaluating candidate targets that includes evaluation of candidates identified by colleagues at other institutions.  Building on previous work of the investigators, we have progressed through the first 3 phases of the translational research process and propose to conduct a Phase I clinical trial within the next 5 years.