University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Director, Abramson Cancer Center John H. Glick, MD Abramson Cancer Center’s Professor Vice Dean, Cancer Programs, Perelman School of Medicine Vice President, Cancer Programs, University of Pennsylvania Health System
Developing a novel immunotherapy to prevent breast cancer in BRCA mutation carriers.
Activating the immune systems to fight cancer is one of the most promising approaches treating patients with cancer. Initial immunotherapy drugs have produced exciting results including for some patients with breast cancer, but few patients have benefits from immunotherapy thus far. Dr. Vonderheide and his team leverage increasing knowledge of the immune system and gene therapy to develop new approaches to prevent breast cancer and recurrence in individuals who are at high risk, including those carrying BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations.
Dr. Vonderheide’s DNA-based vaccine is specific for the human telomerase catalytic domain (hTERT) which is overexpressed in more than 95% of breast cancers. He and his team are conducting a phase I clinical trial to test the vaccine in BRCA mutation carriers with and without breast cancer. This is the first prevention vaccine tested in this high-risk population. To date, more than 100 participants have been vaccinated with no serious side effects.
Dr. Vonderheide’s team will continue enrolling participants into the vaccine trial, monitoring vaccine toxicities and adverse events, and collecting samples from participants. They aim to leverage the knowledge they gain from these important clinical and laboratory studies to develop novel cancer prevention and interception strategies.
Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, D.Phil. received his DPhil from Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar) and MD from Harvard Medical School. He completed training in internal medicine and medical oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
Dr. Vonderheide is a distinguished scientist and board-certified medical oncologist who has deciphered mechanisms of cancer immune surveillance and developed novel cancer therapeutics. He is well-recognized for driving the development of agonist CD40 antibodies, now in later stage clinical trials, as potential immune therapy of cancer. Dr. Vonderheide merges his clinical investigations with rigorous studies in genetically engineered mouse models or other laboratory systems. An elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, Dr. Vonderheide has been continuously funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), serves on nine scientific boards for other cancer centers and the NCI Board of Scientific Advisers. His high-impact findings have been published in Nature, Science, Cell and the New England Journal of Medicine.
2007
The Judy and Leonard Lauder Award
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