A Publication for Baylor Scott & White Health’ s Oncology Program
A Record of Accomplishments
Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas has a rich history of immune therapy innovation, especially in the area of dendritic cell research, as shown in the seminal work of the team at BIIR. Their novel treatments for colleague and mentor, Ralph M. Steinman, MD, helped him fight his pancreatic cancer for 4½ years, far beyond the median survival for this disease.
It was the late Dr. Steinman who coined the term“ dendritic cells” in 1973. In 2011, Dr. Steinman was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity. BIIR’ s oncology vaccine research facility is named after him: the Ralph M. Steinman Center for Cancer Vaccines at BIIR in Dallas.
NATIONAL‘ CANCER MOONSHOT’
42 / BUMC and BIIR are Creating New
16 / Clinical Trials Using CAR T-Cells Start to Treat Blood Cancers ALL and MCL
11 /“ Pancvax” Clinical Trial is First Study of Dendritic
Cell Vaccine in Pancreatic Cancer Patients
Ultimately, the aim of the‘ moonshot’ is to win the war on cancer— to get to a point in the very near future when we are managing cancer the same way we might manage any chronic disease... When we can finally stop the toxic therapies, such as chemotherapy and radiation that decimate the immune system, and instead, rally the full power of the immune system and the body’ s natural killer cells to fight off the cancer the way they were designed to do, the patient is not only surviving the diagnosis, but living— even thriving— with cancer.
Cancer MoonShot 2020, which aims to bring together government, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, academic centers, and community oncologists to find vaccine-based immunotherapies against cancer.
Expanding the Armamentarium
In the future, Dr. Miller believes that immunotherapy and genomic therapies will be used in combination, either in sequence or simultaneously, to treat cancer. For him, they are two more legs of what is now a five-legged stool of available cancer therapies: immunotherapy and genomic therapy, in addition to surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
Immune Therapies Against Cancer
“ Just the same way we started using surgery, radiation and chemo as individual modalities— and then found out that in many cases we can get the most benefit out of using them in combinations— I believe we’ ll see that same combination with targeted genomic therapies and immune therapies,” Dr. Miller said.