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Yale immuno-oncology center designed to accelerate research, improve outcomes
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Yale Cancer Center has launched the Yale Center for Immuno-Oncology.
The new venture is intended to create greater efficiency for and promote more collaboration between scientists and faculty.
“We hope that we can transform the way we treat people affected by cancer by generating research advances more quickly in this groundbreaking field,” Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Center and interim director of Yale Center for Immuno-Oncology, said in a press release.
HemOnc Today asked Herbst about how the concept came about, the short-term priorities for the center and the potential long-term benefits of this initiative.
Question: How did the concept for this center come about?
Answer: The use of immunotherapy for cancer is a new paradigm. It has always been used in melanoma and renal cancers, but now it is invading all tumor types. Moving forward, it is quite clear that science will drive the understanding of sensitivity, resistance and immune toxicities. We figured it was time to create a center that includes all of the strong basic science departments — such as pathology, pharmacology and molecular cancer biology — to take advantage of what we have at Yale and be a leader in translational research. We have created a focal point group that works together and includes administrative and research support that can bring immunology to the lab, to the clinic and back again.
Q: Who will be involved in the center and what will they do?
A: Along with Charles S. Fuchs, MD, director of Yale Cancer Center, and Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, head of the department of immunology at Yale, we came together and decided we wanted to create this center. We are looking for a top immunologist to serve as permanent director of the center.
Q: What will change about how immuno-oncology work is conducted at Yale?
A: Yale has such great strength in science and we now have great strength in translational research. Although much of the efforts the center will encompass have been going on for quite some time at our institution, with this new center we will be able to coordinate and combine these efforts all in one place. We will use new techniques to excel translationally in the field of immunology. Immunotherapy is incredible. I never would have thought that I could give my patients with lung cancer pembrolizumab (Keytruda, Merck) and no chemotherapy and keep them alive years later. I see all of the trials that are ongoing and they are wonderful, but we need novel biomarkers in addition to the clinical trials so that we can identify how these mechanisms work. The way in which we do this is with scientists in the labs. This is one of the many strengths of our new center.
Q: What are the short-term priorities for the center?
A: Our first projects will consist of developing a personalized immunotherapy platform that we can roll out Yale-wide. Imagine a world in which patients come to a center and the tumors are already tested for the genome and all of the genomic alterations. With sequencing, we can conduct immune profiling to group patients onto different arms of a clinical trial and really understand which drugs and combinations work best for each patient. Another goal is to understand the toxicities of these drugs and how we can best target pathways, which is only something that we can do by testing these patients. We really have the ability here to accelerate research.
Q: What long-term benefits could a center like this provide?
A: Our long-term goal is to improve the outcomes of patients and deliver these new therapies to the people who need them. This center will develop strong science. This strong science will help clinical work at Yale, as well as around the country and around the world. Ultimately, the goals of this center are to leverage Yale leadership in immunobiology and immunotherapy drug development; develop the next generation of immune-based therapies; and genetically engineer immune cells to target patients’ cancer with immunotherapy.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like to mentio n?
A: It is fantastic that our team at Yale School of Medicine has seen the importance of building this center. A unified team is the best way to conduct translational science and this is what we are doing with this center. We are able to accomplish things together as a team, which we may not have been able to do working on our own. I would also like to mention that our team received an award in April from American Society for Translational Research for immunotherapy, and I am very proud of this. – by Jennifer Southall
For more information:
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, can be reached at Yale Cancer Center, P.O. Box 208028, New Haven CT 06520.
Disclosure: Herbst reports no relevant financial disclosures.