Immunotherapy of Brain Tumors
This research focuses on understanding the immune system because the immune system may be useful in treating brain tumors. Brain tumors are a mass of abnormal cell growth within the brain whose cells divide in an uncontrolled manner. The immune system is responsible for protecting humans from viruses, bacteria, and cancer cells. One component of the immune system consists of white blood cells called lymphocytes. The major lymphocytes in protecting the body against potential infections are B-cells, which produce antibodies, and T-cells, which destroy pathogens by killing, infected cells. T-cells are also involved in fighting cancer cells. One type of treatment that we are studying to treat brain tumors is Immunotherapy. Immunotherapy uses the immune system to fight off cancer cells and also destroys tumor cells with minimal damage to normal tissues. It also activates white bloods cells to attack cancer cells. One type of cancer Immunotherapy that has many roles in treating cancer is cytokines. Cytokines enhance a cancer patient immune system to fight cancer cell growth. The cytokine that I am focusing on is interleukin 7. IL-7 is a survival signal for T-cells and may increase T-cell survival in a technique called adoptive transfers. We are trying to find a way to improve adoptive transfer of T-cells by using IL-7. Adoptive transfer of T-cells is where lymphocytes and splenocytes are removed from donor mice and injected into recipient mice. T-cells are capable of killing cancer cells. We take the T-cells out of donor without the tumor and inject the T-cells into the mice with the tumor. By doing this, we hope that the T-cells from the donor mice, will recognize and kill the cancer cells in the recipient mice. IL-7 will cause proliferation without activation of T-cells. I am trying to find out whether the transferred T-cells are proliferating more in the IL-7 treated mice than the T-cells that were originally in the mice.
School:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department:
Biological Psychology
Research Advisor:
Edward Roy
Department of Research Advisor:
Biological Psychology
Year of Publication:
2002