Bone marrow transplantation harnesses the immune system to fight cancer
In the 1970s, a team of Fred Hutch scientists provided the first definitive and reproducible example of the immune system’s power to cure cancer. Led by Dr. E. Donnall Thomas, they pioneered bone marrow transplantation as a treatment for previously incurable blood cancers. This work won Thomas the Nobel Prize and helped spark a revolutionary new field of cancer treatment known as immunotherapy.
Today, our researchers are studying and developing several types of next-generation immunotherapies, each of which boosts the immune system in different ways. These therapies can be used alone or in combination with conventional treatments or with one another. Our areas of focus in immunotherapy include:
- Adoptive T-cell therapies. These treatments involve transferring disease-fighting immune cells into a patient, often after genetically modifying them to target cancerous cells. T-cell therapies are being developed for blood cancers like leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. And they are being researched for skin, kidney, breast and pancreatic cancers.
- Antibody-based therapies. These treatments use highly selective immune proteins called antibodies, sometimes attached to a chemotherapeutic drug or joined to a radioactive particle so they focus the drug or radiation on cancer cells.
- Checkpoint inhibitors. The immune system has built-in mechanisms called checkpoints that keep it from attacking normal cells or from switching off a legitimate immune reaction. Cancer cells often hijack these control mechanisms to avoid being attacked by the immune system. Checkpoint inhibitors interfere with that process and have shown success in some patients with melanoma, lung, kidney, ovarian and bladder cancer.
Cancer treatments leave patients immunocompromised
People with compromised immune systems, including infants, the elderly and people undergoing chemotherapy or transplantation, are particularly vulnerable to viral infections. Dr. Michael Boeckh’s lab investigates the genetics of susceptibility to viruses and how to prevent and mitigate infectious disease in immunocompromised people. Dr. Steve Pergam’s lab studies risk factors and prevention methods related to pathogens, including norovirus, respiratory viruses and cytomegalovirus, or CMV, which are especially dangerous to blood stem cell transplant patients.
CMV, in particular, has been a longtime focus of Fred Hutch research since the dawn of the center’s transplant program. Current CMV researchers include Dr. Adam Geballe, who investigates how CMV and similar viruses interact with target cells in our bodies, along with the strategies evolving on each side to evade or combat the other. The team of Dr. Geoffrey Hill, who holds the José Carreras/E. Donnall Thomas Endowed Chair for Cancer Research, discovered that antibodies play a vital role in the immune system’s defenses against CMV. This insight could pave the way for cheaper, safer therapies to protect patients against CMV.
Remarkable researchers
Throughout the history of the organization, remarkable researchers have led the way in exploring how the immune system works and connecting those explorations with cancer. Here are three examples that span the past, present and future.
The late Dr. Paul Neiman was a founding member of Fred Hutch, a transplant physician and cancer biologist. He was well known in the scientific community for his fundamental research on the interplay between viruses and cancer cells, making key discoveries about the nature of retroviruses, the type of virus that includes HIV.
For more than four decades, Dr. Larry Corey has led the development of safe and effective antivirals for herpes, HIV and hepatitis infections. As president and director of Fred Hutch from 2011 to 2014, he helped drive lifesaving discoveries across an even broader spectrum of diseases. An international expert in the design and testing of vaccines, he is a key part of the global, strategic response to COVID-19 and helped to found the COVID-19 Prevention Network.
An evolutionary biologist trained in infectious-disease dynamics and virus evolution, Dr. Trevor Bedford uses powerful computers and complex statistical methods to study the rapid spread of viruses and how they change over time. Since joining the Hutch in 2013, he has been developing tools to use genetic sequencing data to build evolutionary trees of viruses. Since January 2020, he has been a COVID-19 detective, sharing his work on Twitter and informing public health efforts to combat the pandemic.
