Buffalo, NY (PRWEB) January 14, 2015

Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) have received a prestigious grant of nearly $12 million from the New York State Stem Cell Science Program (NYSTEM) to develop new therapies for advanced ovarian cancer. The four-year, $11.9 million grant to RPCI is one of three new state awards totaling $36 million to support innovative approaches for developing stem-cell based therapies for diseases that are notoriously hard to treat. The clinical need for new treatments is dire, as advanced ovarian cancer is an aggressive and typically fatal disease.

Using an approach known as adoptive T-cell therapy, the Roswell Park team, led by Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD, FRCOG, FACOG, Chair of the Department of Gynecologic Oncology, M. Steven Piver Professor of Gynecologic Oncology and Executive Director of the Center for Immunotherapy, will take stem cells from patients blood, re-engineer them and infuse the reprogrammed cells back into those patients. Once inside the patients body, the re-engineered stem cells become a continuous, potentially lifelong source of cancer-fighting immune cells. This strategy has proven successful in preclinical studies as a way to not only eradicate existing cancer but to prevent new cancer cells from developing.

New York is home to some of the best researchers across the globe, and this funding will help ensure they can do the necessary work to grow our progress in stem cell science, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo said in announcing the awards on Jan. 12. This state is proud to be a leader in the health industry, and with this funding we will continue to develop modern, world-class research programs that work to make people worldwide healthier.

The concept behind this new and novel project, which builds on past Roswell Park research, is to unite the cancer-killing power of T cells with the long-term regenerative power of adult stem cells. By enlisting both killer CD8+ T cells and helper CD4+ T cells, the researchers will be able to turn a patients own, reprogrammed stem cells into immune cells armed with the ability to recognize and kill cancer cells.

This project represents a potentially paradigm-shifting approach in the use of immunotherapy to treat cancer, because we will be generating billions of these antitumor effector cells to continually control existing tumors and minimize the chance of relapse, said Dr. Odunsi, who is also Co-Leader of Roswell Parks Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy Program and a Professor of Gynecology & Obstetrics at the University at Buffalo (UB). Reprograming adult hematopoietic stem cells for sustained attack against ovarian cancer is, to our knowledge, a completely new approach.

Like much previous RPCI research on immune therapies to combat ovarian cancer, this new project targets the NY-ESO-1 antigen, which is expressed in cancer cells but not in most normal body tissues. Because this protein is so widely expressed by various malignant tumors, the approach may have application in the treatment of other cancers as well.

The project will encompass both preclinical work and an early-phase clinical research study in patients with ovarian cancer, and will take advantage of three resources housed within the RPCI Center for Immunotherapy:

Roswell Park faculty members Thinle Chodon, MD, PhD, and Takemasa Tsuji, PhD, are also among Dr. Odunsis co-investigators, as are Dr. Richard Bankert, VMD, PhD, from the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University at Buffalo and Leonard Shultz, PhD, from The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine.

This Roswell Park-developed, Roswell Park-led initiative is just the latest example of the ingenuity Dr. Odunsi and his team bring to the pressing challenge of how to develop better and more effective therapies for cancer, said Candace Johnson, PhD, President & CEO and Cancer Center Director at Roswell Park. We are enormously grateful for the leadership Gov. Cuomo and NYSTEM have shown in dedicating these funds strategically to address high-priority medical issues, and to the numerous individual and corporate donors whose contributions to the Roswell Park Alliance Foundation enabled the laboratory advances that Dr. Odunsi and his team will now be able to bring to patients.

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New Approach, New Hope: $12M New York State Investment Will Fast-Track Innovative Roswell Park Research in Ovarian ...