Most conventional therapies for cancer, including chemotherapy and radiation, damage immune cells at the same time as they kill cancer cells—sort of like killing your enemy and your troops at the same time. Relapse rates can be high for some cancers, even if the therapy is initially effective.
Immune therapy holds greater promise for a long-term cure for cancer, but is currently only effective in 20-40% of patients. Dr. Yang-Xin Fu, M.D., Ph.D., believes that immune therapies could be made more effective with a new combination approach, which would also recruit immune cells to tumors at the same time as revving up their effectiveness.
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Most conventional therapies for cancer, including chemotherapy and radiation, damage immune cells at the same time as they kill cancer cells—sort of like killing your enemy and your troops at the same time. Relapse rates can be high for some cancers, even if the therapy is initially effective.
Immune therapy holds greater promise for a long-term cure for cancer, but is currently only effective in 20-40% of patients. Dr. Yang-Xin Fu, M.D., Ph.D., believes that immune therapies could be made more effective with a new combination approach, which would also recruit immune cells to tumors at the same time as revving up their effectiveness.
He was recruited in 2015 to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center department of pathology from the University of Chicago, with the help of a Recruitment of Established Investigator Award from CPRIT. He joined the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Dr. Fu has found that immune therapies fail in 60% of cases because the tumors do not have enough immune cells inside them to begin with. The therapy revs up the immune system, but the killer cells still can’t get inside the tumors to inflict damage to the cancer.
Cancers that respond do better to immune therapy in general, like melanoma and lung cancer, appear to do so because they have more T cells on site. Dr. Fu’s team has been developing new approaches to direct T cells to where they need to go by using a biological equivalent of a lure. Once the T cells are inside the tumors, then immune therapy should be able to be made more effective for all types of cancers.
Dr. Fu’s “lures” combine antibodies with a large molecule designed to recruit immune cells. These antibodies are like cancer-seeking missiles, and will find their way to and bind to cancer cells wherever they are in the body. In addition, they carry a payload, which lands in the tumor and then sends out signals to the immune system to activate or direct T cells to the tumors. Then, already–FDA-approved immune therapies could be employed, which help T cell armies keep from getting exhausted while fighting cancer cells.
He says that people did not fully realize the key role of the immune system in fighting cancer until relatively recently. “Now that most people realize the importance of the immune response, I believe that cancer treatment will require multiple approaches and combination therapies,” he says. “Our approach utilizes a drug to direct immune cells to the tumor as well as a drug to mobilize the immune system.”
So far, he’s found that this approach works in animal models. He hopes to move it into clinical trials in patients in the next two to three years. “We think in the next two years we will have very good news for cancer patients and there will be a new strategy for cancer treatment,” he says.
Dr. Fu is grateful to CPRIT for allowing him to focus his efforts on cancer. Previously, he had to diversify his research in order to obtain enough funding. But focusing on cancer has enabled him to move his research forward to an extent that he believes will translate to patient care relatively quickly.
Dr. Fu studied medicine at Shanghai Medical University in China, and received his Ph.D. in microbiology & immunology from University of Miami School of Medicine. He was a postdoctoral fellow in infectious disease in Denver, and then a resident in pathology at Washington University, prior to joining the faculty at Chicago in 1998.
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