Newswise — Cancer Research Institute, Inc. (CRI), a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing new immune system-based cancer treatments to patients sooner, celebrates yesterday’s announcement from the Medical Research Council (MRC), a publicly funded U.K. organization dedicated to improving human health, that Vincenzo Cerundolo, M.D., Ph.D., has been named director of the MRC Human Immunology Unit (HIU) at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, U.K. He took over the prestigious role on July 1, following the retirement of former HIU director Professor Andrew McMichael.
“The Cancer Research Institute is proud of Dr. Cerundolo’s recent elevation to a position that for more than a decade has been held by one of immunology’s most esteemed scientific luminaries,” said CRI executive director Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, Ph.D. “It’s a testament to the caliber of Dr. Cerundolo’s scientific work, vision, and leadership, and we wish him all the best success in his new position.”
Dr. Cerundolo, a professor of immunology at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at the University of Oxford, is director of operations at the Oxford site of the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative (CVC), a joint program of the Cancer Research Institute and Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. In this capacity, Dr. Cerundolo coordinates all Oxford site activities within the CVC’s global research network to accelerate the discovery, development, and optimization of therapeutic cancer vaccines. This international collaboration includes 19 academic clinical trial sites and immunological monitoring laboratories throughout the U.K., the European Union, Japan, Australia, and the United States.
Since the inception of the CVC in 2001, the coordinated team of academic researchers has conducted more than 40 single-variable, early phase clinical trials of tumor antigen-specific therapeutic vaccines in more than 700 patients with melanoma, breast, colorectal, lung, ovarian, prostate, and other cancers. From this work, the group has produced more than 120 peer-reviewed scientific publications that have contributed significantly to the international research community’s understanding of the fundamentals of therapeutic cancer vaccination and immunological monitoring in patients receiving cancer immunotherapy.
Some of the many vaccine variables tested to date within the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative include antigen forms (peptides vs. proteins vs. DNA), adjuvants (BCG, GM-CSF, Imiquimod, Mixed Bacterial Vaccine), antigen delivery systems (viral vectors, antigen presenting cells, ISCOMATRIX™), inoculation strategies (method of delivery, timing, dosage), and modulators of immunosuppression (anti-CTLA-4, cyclophosphamide).
Dr. Cerundolo is a world-leading tumor immunologist who has made many important contributions to the field. He was the first to apply tetramer technology developed by Mark M. Davis, Ph.D., of Stanford University to the study of cancer antigen-specific cellular immune responses.
With the support of a Cancer Research Institute Investigator Award from 1999 to 2003, Dr. Cerundolo established that tetramers could be used in assessing melanoma-specific T-cell responses. Since that time, these and other tetramer-based technologies have become central to immunological monitoring within the Cancer Vaccine Collaborative and the field at large. As a result, physician-scientists testing experimental therapeutic cancer vaccines are better able to determine the quality of a cancer patient’s tumor-specific immune response.
Cerundolo and others at the University of Oxford also have developed a novel therapeutic compound that targets innate Natural Killer T cells, powerful and fast-acting sentinels within the immune system that play a key role in tumor recognition and elimination. He is currently planning a CVC clinical trial to test this compound in combination with a tumor antigen vaccine in patients with melanoma.
As director of the MRC Human Immunology Unit, Dr. Cerundolo plans to increase the unit’s overall focus on cancer while continuing to advance discoveries that are making an impact in diseases involving the immune system. “Cancer, autoimmunity, and chronic inflammation are three aspects of the same problem,” Cerundolo said in an interview with CRI. “The lessons that we can learn from cancer immunology are therefore applicable to many different diseases.”
Reference: Oxford Professor to Direct MRC Human Immunology Unit
Media Contact:Brian M. Brewer, Cancer Research InstitutePhone: +1(212)688-7515, ext. 242Email: [email protected]
About the Cancer Research InstituteThe Cancer Research Institute (CRI) is the world’s only non-profit organization dedicated exclusively to the support and coordination of scientific and clinical efforts that will lead to the immunological treatment, control, and prevention of cancer. Guided by a world-renowned Scientific Advisory Council that includes four Nobel Prize winners and twenty-nine members of the National Academy of Sciences, CRI supports leading-edge cancer research at top medical centers and universities throughout the world. The Cancer Research Institute is ushering in a new era of scientific progress, hastening the discovery of effective cancer vaccines and other immune-based therapies that are providing new hope to cancer patients.
The Cancer Research Institute has one of the lowest overhead expense ratios among non-profit organizations, with more than 85 percent of its resources going directly to the support of its science, medical, and research programs. CRI meets or exceeds all 20 standards of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance, the most comprehensive U.S. charity evaluation service, and has earned the GuideStar Exchange Seal, indicating our commitment to the transparency of our organizational information to donors, funders, those we serve, the public, and regulators. CRI has also received an 'A' grade for fiscal disclosure and efficiency from the American Institute of Philanthropy as well as top accolades from other charity watchdog organizations. For more information, visit http://www.cancerresearch.org.
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