Biologic therapy for brain cancers--based on cellular and immunobiology

The overall goal of our research projects is to develop effective immunotherapeutic regimens, particularly combining vaccine and gene therapy/ cell therapy strategies. For the development of clinically effective immunotherapy for brain cancers, the following issues are considered to be particularly important: 1) Induction of effective immune responses against tumors (afferent arm of the immune response), 2) Delivery of immune effector cells to the target tumor sites and maintaining the activity of the effector cells (efferent arm), 3) For specific and safe immunotherapy, specific brain tumor rejection antigens have to be identified, 4) Feasibility, safety and efficacy need to be tested in a series of clinical trials. The following presentation summarizes my research projects and demonstrates how each plan will fit in the whole schema of designing successful immunotherapeutic strategies for brain cancers. In this presentation, I would like to focus on our clinical and basic studies related to the vaccine strategies for patients with glioma, and modulation of tumor-microenvironment using bone-marrow derived stroma cells as vehicles for cytokine- gene delivery.