Cancer Updates Dec Issue Final-16006_Cancer_Updates_Dec_Issue_F4_spreads | Page 6

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A Record of Accomplishments BAYLOR UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER AT DALLAS AND BIIR
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. Dendritic cells are keys to the immune system and vaccine development.
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.
GET GLOBAL IN DEVELOPMENT
OF CANCER VACCINES
Since the inception of Baylor Institute for Immunology Research (BIIR) by founding
director Jacques Banchereau, PhD, in 1996, BIIR has been at the forefront of
developing vaccines to treat cancer.
Preventive vaccines aim to stop infection from exposure to pathogens, such as viruses, parasites,
bacteria, allergens and fungal infections—diseases with specific causes that originate outside the
body. In contrast, cancer vaccines are therapies designed to combat tumors that form from genetic
mutations inside the body.
NATIONAL ‘CANCER MOONSHOT’
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 th