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The Cleveland Clinic received a $12 million NIH grant to define how cytokines regulate inflammation
Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute received a five-year, $12 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to define how cytokines - proteins produced during the immune response - regulate inflammation and interact with cells and molecules that surround tumors. The delivery of cytokines in immunotherapy can signal an immune response that kills cancer cells, but the resulting inflammation can also create an environment that encourages cells to mutate and tumors to grow. Gathering detailed information about how cytokines work in specific cancers can...
The Cleveland Clinic received a $12 million NIH grant to define how cytokines regulate inflammation
Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute received a five-year, $12 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to define how cytokines - proteins produced during the immune response - regulate inflammation and interact with cells and molecules that surround tumors.
The delivery of cytokines in immunotherapy can signal an immune response that kills cancer cells, but the resulting inflammation can also create an environment that encourages cells to mutate and tumors to grow. Gathering detailed information about how cytokines work in specific cancers can help navigate the complex pathways tumors use to evade treatment and make strategies like immunotherapy more successful.
Although immunotherapies are becoming increasingly popular and have significant potential, they only work in a small proportion of patients. We don't fully understand why they only work in 20-30% of patients with a particular type of cancer and don't address the other 70%. I think these differences are reflected in the complexity of this research.”
Thomas Hamilton, Ph.D., director of strategic growth for Cleveland Clinic's Chief Research and Academic Office and principal investigator of the study
The NIH funding supports the next step in a decades-long research program at the Lerner Research Institute, which conducts groundbreaking research on cytokines, immune response and inflammation.
Principal investigators of the research program are long-time employees, including Dr. Hamilton, George Stark, Ph.D., Division of Cancer Biology at the Lerner Research Institute; and Mark Jackson, Ph.D., Department of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University and associate director of education and training at Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Researchers are studying the effects of cytokines on certain types of cancer. Dr. Stark and Hamilton examine lung cancer while Dr. Jackson's project focused on triple-negative breast cancer. Distinguishing between different types of cancer is important because treatments that work on one may not be effective on another, says Dr. Strong.
“Originally, cancers were categorized primarily by the organ in which they occurred,” he says. "With molecular analysis, we now see that there are many different subtypes for each cancer. We can optimize treatment for each individual cancer because we understand the underlying causes much better."
The results of the program have the potential to be translated directly into patient care and support Cleveland Clinic's approach to individualized, state-of-the-art cancer care. “Identifying potential therapeutic windows – specific cytokines, times, concentrations – all of these things could allow us to say that antagonizing a particular factor or administering a particular treatment at a particular time may be beneficial,” says Dr. Hamilton.
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