UK. A ground-breaking technique to help identify new ways to personalise cancer treatments with the potential to save many lives is being supported through funds donated by The Moodie Davitt Report.
Dr Katharina von Loga is a current recipient of The Moodie Davitt EGB Cancer Research Fellowship research bursary at The Royal Marsden Hospital. She has joined the team at the Centre for Molecular Pathology (CMP) to investigate how immunotherapy drugs work at a cellular level.
The Moodie Davitt Report pledged £175,000 (US$222,000) to fund various cancer research projects through The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity in 2017. This followed a donation of US$202,000 in December 2013, when The Moodie Davitt Report contributed to fund a vital Royal Marsden research study into genetic sequencing.
Immunotherapy is a form of treatment which attempts to help the body’s own immune system to identify and kill cancer cells. These drugs have had significant success in treating some patients’ cancers, while having no effect for many others.
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Dr von Loga is focusing on immune checkpoint inhibitors – a type of immunotherapy drug that target specific parts of cancer cells, known as checkpoints, which trick the immune system into thinking they are normal healthy cells. Immune checkpoint inhibitors only work for some patients, but identifying those who will benefit from these potentially life-saving drugs is currently impossible.
It is probable that some tumours have multiple checkpoints that enable them to hide from the immune system, some of which have not yet been discovered. If this is correct, then simply blocking known checkpoints using immune checkpoint inhibitors will not necessarily expose the tumour to the immune system (as the other unknown checkpoints will continue hiding it). This would explain the lack of effect for some patients.
Dr von Loga will be using a pathology method called multiplex immunohistochemistry to identify new checkpoints. With this method, specific features of cells within cancer tissue can be stained with six different colours, digitally imaged for analysis. Part of Dr von Loga’s work will create a process that takes advantage of this method to monitor the immune cells within cancers over the course of therapy.
In addition to establishing the new laboratory and methodology to embark on this ground breaking research, Dr von Loga has also been involved in establishing a trial of a new immune checkpoint inhibitor called Avelumab. This trial will provide gastric and gastro-oesophageal cancerpatients with access to a new potentially life-saving drug while also providing additional data to be analysed using Dr von Loga’s new method. This trial is currently in the recruitment phase and the first samples have already investigated.
A spokesperson for the Royal Marsden said: “Immunotherapy treatments, and in particular immune checkpoint inhibitors, can save the lives of patients who have advanced cancer which is untreatable by other means. However, for many patients, these drugs do not have any effect.
“The Moodie Davitt EGB Cancer Research Fellowship is enabling Dr von Loga to establish a new style of research which will begin to explain why this is.
“If successful, this research will allow clinicians to begin targeting treatments to patients who will be responsive, while informing further drug development by identifying new immune checkpoints which could be targeted.’’
The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie, who was successfully treated by The Royal Marsden in 2010 and 2011 for stomach cancer, said: “This is precisely the kind of breakthrough work that our fellowship is designed to support. The Royal Marsden continues to deliver life-changing research that is tilting odds in mankind’s favour against this scourge of a disease.’’
The initials EGB in The Moodie Davitt EGB Cancer Research Fellowship honour loved ones of past and present members of the Moodie Davitt team who have been lost to the disease: Emma, sister to Chief Operating Officer Victoria Willey; Gary, father to former Brands Editor Helen Pawson; and Brendan, husband of former Advertising Director Connie Magner.