ONCO 222 - CANCER IMMUNOLOGY/IMMUNOTHERAPY

[3 Credits]

The course will briefly review the history of the initial immunotherapy studies done in the 1890’s which led to the development of the first successful application of immunotherapy clinical trials in the 1910’s. We will review the mechanisms that blocked the further success of these initial trials. This will be followed by discussion and reading of fundamental discoveries in cancer immunology (cytokines, chemokines and immune regulation) and immunological technologies such as the production of monoclonal antibodies that led to the first successful antibody-based immunotherapies, T cell cloning and T cell expansion which became the basis for CAR-T cell therapies. In addition, we will make emphasis on the discoveries of immunoregulatory mechanisms that led to the discovery of checkpoints and the development of checkpoint inhibitors, which are the basis for modern day cancer immunotherapies. We will discuss how the pre-clinical research and clinical trials in cancer immunotherapy have led to an unprecedented approval of cancer treatments in the last decade. In addition, we will discuss the current efforts in the development of cancer vaccines and oncolytic viruses.