2008 Research Awards » Young Investigator Awards
MRA awarded three outstanding young investigators $100,000 over two years whose work shows great promise in the field of melanoma research.
• Proposal Title: Targeting CD4+ T cells for melanoma immunotherapy
Timothy Bullock, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, University of Virginia
Dr. Bullock's work will methods to expand the tumor antigen-specific CD4+T cell population with the ultimate goal of assessing whether the presence of such immune cells can enhance immunologic control of tumor.
• Regulation of T cellchemokine receptor expression during vaccination: Tumor-targetedimmunotherapy
David Mullins, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Human Immune Therapy, University of Virginia
Dr. Mullins will study optimal vaccination strategies in mouse models with the goal of enhancing vaccine-induced T cell expression and infiltration into melanoma lesions. This could form the basis for exploratory clinical immunotherapy vaccination trials in humans.
• Defining the role of inducible co-stimulator (ICOS)-expressing T cells against melanoma
Dr. Padmanee Sharma, M.D., Ph.D.Assistant Professor, University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Anti-CTLA-4 antibody is a novel agent that enhances T cell function and induces tumor regression in approximately 10-20 percent of patients; however, it is not known how to predict who will respond. An increase in ICOS-expressing CD4 T cells has recently been found in patients treated with anti-CTLA-4 antibody. Dr. Sharma aims to correlate changes in immunologic markers with clinical outcome in patients with metastatic melanoma undergoing treatment with anti-CTLA-4 therapy, and to investigate the role of ICOS-expressing T cells in anti-tumor responses against B16 melanoma in the ICOS-knockout and ICOS-ligand-knockout mouse models.