Mary L. "Nora" Disis is an American physician-oncologist and the editor in chief of JAMA Oncology .
She was part of the scientific team who discovered that the HER2/neu molecule is a tumor-specific marker, or antigen.
Disis is an oncologist [1] and the director of the University of Washington's Cancer Vaccine Institute, Center for Translational Medicine in Women's Health and its Institute of Translational Health Science. [2]
She is the associate dean of the University of Washington's School of Medicine, the dean of Research and Graduate Education, the associate dean of Translational Science, the Helen B. Slonaker Endowed Professor for Cancer Research, a professor of Medicine and Oncology, and an adjunct professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pathology. [2]
She is an investigator at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center [3] and an expert in immunology and the immunotherapy of both ovarian and breast cancers. [4] She was part of the investigative team who discovered that the HER2/neu molecule is a tumor-specific marker, or antigen. [4] [5]
She is the founding editor in chief of JAMA Oncology . [2]
Natural killer cells, also known as NK cells or large granular lymphocytes (LGL), are a type of cytotoxic lymphocyte critical to the innate immune system. They belong to the rapidly expanding family of known innate lymphoid cells (ILC) and represent 5–20% of all circulating lymphocytes in humans. The role of NK cells is analogous to that of cytotoxic T cells in the vertebrate adaptive immune response. NK cells provide rapid responses to virus-infected cells, stressed cells, tumor cells, and other intracellular pathogens based on signals from several activating and inhibitory receptors. Most immune cells detect the antigen presented on major histocompatibility complex I (MHC-I) on infected cell surfaces, but NK cells can recognize and kill stressed cells in the absence of antibodies and MHC, allowing for a much faster immune reaction. They were named "natural killers" because of the notion that they do not require activation to kill cells that are missing "self" markers of MHC class I. This role is especially important because harmful cells that are missing MHC I markers cannot be detected and destroyed by other immune cells, such as T lymphocyte cells.
A cancer vaccine, or oncovaccine, is a vaccine that either treats existing cancer or prevents development of cancer. Vaccines that treat existing cancer are known as therapeutic cancer vaccines or tumor antigen vaccines. Some of the vaccines are "autologous", being prepared from samples taken from the patient, and are specific to that patient.
Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a form of immunostaining. It involves the process of selectively identifying antigens (proteins) in cells and tissue, by exploiting the principle of antibodies binding specifically to antigens in biological tissues. Albert Hewett Coons, Ernest Berliner, Norman Jones and Hugh J Creech was the first to develop immunofluorescence in 1941. This led to the later development of immunohistochemistry.
In biology, chimeric antigen receptors (CARs)—also known as chimeric immunoreceptors, chimeric T cell receptors or artificial T cell receptors—are receptor proteins that have been engineered to give T cells the new ability to target a specific antigen. The receptors are chimeric in that they combine both antigen-binding and T cell activating functions into a single receptor.
Cancer immunotherapy (immuno-oncotherapy) is the stimulation of the immune system to treat cancer, improving the immune system's natural ability to fight the disease. It is an application of the fundamental research of cancer immunology (immuno-oncology) and a growing subspecialty of oncology.
Receptor tyrosine-protein kinase erbB-2 is a protein that normally resides in the membranes of cells and is encoded by the ERBB2 gene. ERBB is abbreviated from erythroblastic oncogene B, a gene originally isolated from the avian genome. The human protein is also frequently referred to as HER2 or CD340.
Lapatinib (INN), used in the form of lapatinib ditosylate (USAN) is an orally active drug for breast cancer and other solid tumours. It is a dual tyrosine kinase inhibitor which interrupts the HER2/neu and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathways. It is used in combination therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer. It is used for the treatment of patients with advanced or metastatic breast cancer whose tumors overexpress HER2 (ErbB2).
Cancer immunology (immuno-oncology) is an interdisciplinary branch of biology and a sub-discipline of immunology that is concerned with understanding the role of the immune system in the progression and development of cancer; the most well known application is cancer immunotherapy, which utilises the immune system as a treatment for cancer. Cancer immunosurveillance and immunoediting are based on protection against development of tumors in animal systems and (ii) identification of targets for immune recognition of human cancer.
A bispecific monoclonal antibody is an artificial protein that can simultaneously bind to two different types of antigen or two different epitopes on the same antigen. Naturally occurring antibodies typically only target one antigen. BsAbs can be manufactured in several structural formats. BsAbs can be designed to recruit and activate immune cells, to interfere with receptor signaling and inactivate signaling ligands, and to force association of protein complexes. BsAbs have been explored for cancer immunotherapy, drug delivery, and Alzheimer's disease.
An oncoantigen is a surface or soluble tumor antigen that supports tumor growth. A major problem of cancer immunotherapy is the selection of tumor cell variants that escape immune recognition. The notion of oncoantigen was set forth in the context of cancer immunoprevention to define a class of persistent tumor antigens not prone to escape from immune recognition.
Wafik El-Deiry is an American physician and cancer researcher who is the Associate Dean for Oncologic Sciences at the Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Director of the Cancer Center at Brown University, and the Director of the Joint Program in Cancer Biology at Brown University and its affiliated hospitals. He was previously deputy director of Translational Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center, where he was also co-Leader of the Molecular Therapeutics Program.
Peptide-based synthetic vaccines are subunit vaccines made from peptides. The peptides mimic the epitopes of the antigen that triggers direct or potent immune responses. Peptide vaccines can not only induce protection against infectious pathogens and non-infectious diseases but also be utilized as therapeutic cancer vaccines, where peptides from tumor-associated antigens are used to induce an effective anti-tumor T-cell response.
Neuvenge, Lapuleucel-T, is a therapeutic cancer vaccine (TCV) in development by Dendreon (DNDN). It uses the "immunotherapy platform approach" first successfully demonstrated on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved TCV Provenge. It was first tested on breast cancer patients with tumors expressing HER2/neu, and is now scheduled to be tested on bladder cancer patients.
Immune checkpoints are regulators of the immune system. These pathways are crucial for self-tolerance, which prevents the immune system from attacking cells indiscriminately. However, some cancers can protect themselves from attack by stimulating immune checkpoint targets.
MicroRNA 489 is a miRNA that in humans is encoded by the MIR489 gene.
Elizabeth M. Jaffee is an American oncologist specializing in pancreatic cancer and immunotherapy.
Robert Maki is an American medical oncologist, Professor of Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, He is a specialist in the management of and translational research regarding sarcoma, the group of connective tissue malignancies that include leiomyosarcoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), liposarcoma, angiosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma, desmoid tumor and many others.
Miram Merad is a French-Algerian professor in Cancer immunology and the Director of the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute (PrIISM) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York, NY. She is the corecipient of the 2018 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine.
Uğur Şahin is a German oncologist and immunologist. He is the founder and CEO of BioNTech, which developed one of the major vaccines against COVID-19. His main fields of research are cancer research and immunology.
George Coukos is a physician-scientist in tumor immunology, professor and director of the Ludwig Cancer Research Lausanne Branch and director of the Department of oncology UNIL-CHUV of the University of Lausanne and the Lausanne University Hospital in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is known for his work on the mechanisms by which tumors suppress anti-cancer immune responses, and the role of the tumor vasculature in that suppression. In addition to his work in ovarian cancer, the combinatorial immune therapies proposed by Professor Coukos have been successfully tested and approved for lung, liver and kidney cancers.