MD Anderson Cancer Center's Immunotherapy platform

Immune checkpoint targeting is a new paradigm for cancer treatment. Rather than targeting the tumor, this approach liberates the immune system to find and destroy cancer cells. This strategy has proven effective in treating many types of cancer and is now the standard of care for metastatic melanoma. The immunotherapy platform provides MD Anderson investigators with support for immunotherapy treatments for a wide variety of tumor types and helps to link immunologic data with the genomic and proteomic platforms. 

Three components

• The preclinical studies group provides for animal studies to help establish the feasibility and efficacy of new treatments and combinations

• Immunologic monitoring provides instrumentation and technical support to analyze immunotherapy treatment on a cellular and molecular basis to gain insight into mechanisms of action and to discover biomarkers to identify patients who are likely to respond or develop adverse reactions to therapies

• Immunopathology seeks to provide understanding of therapy-associated changes in the tumor microenvironment

Leaders

• Jim Allison, Ph.D., chair, Immunology
• Padmanee Sharma, M.D., Ph.D., professor, Genitourinary Medical Oncology