Immunotherapy — using the body’s own immune system to fight off disease — is a new frontier in cancer treatment. Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has been instrumental in the development of many immunotherapies, bringing emerging options to patients months, sometimes years, before they are available from other providers. Through clinical trials, patients have earliest access to the treatments, even before FDA approval.
Our immune systems are designed to protect our bodies from harmful invaders like bacteria, viruses and other diseases. It’s usually quite good at it, but cancer especially has a way of evading the immune system and preventing it from doing its job. Cancer occurs because something in our immune system broke down. “Immunotherapy seeks to restore the function of the immune system so it can fight the cancer,” says Roswell Park’s Igor Puzanov, MD, MSCI, FAPC, Senior Vice President of Clinical Investigation. “And not just for a little while, but to kill it for good.”
Research leads to next discovery
As a comprehensive cancer center designated by the National Cancer Institute and in the top tier of less than 4% of cancer centers, Roswell Park draws elite cancer scientists and physicians from around the world, especially those who work in immunotherapy. Among them, a team of researchers who were central to historic breakthroughs in immunotherapy strategies and development of today’s FDA-approved treatments. “Using the immune system means we can do much better,” says Renier Brentjens, MD, PhD, Deputy Director and Chair of the Department of Medicine. “We can more specifically target just the cancer cells and not the healthy tissue. Immunotherapy has shifted the way we view cancer treatment.”
The first real immunotherapy breakthrough came around 2010 with the advent of immune checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that release the immune system’s inherent “brakes” and activate it to resume its job. Patients at Roswell Park had access to that first checkpoint inhibitor drug, ipilimumab (Yervoy) through clinical trials before FDA approval. In 2017, when the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, a cutting-edge cellular therapy, was approved for certain forms of leukemia, Roswell Park was the only center in the region capable of providing the complex therapy.
Why choose Roswell Park for immunotherapy?
Our world-renowned team of physicians and scientists were central to historic breakthroughs in immunotherapy strategies.
Using the immune system’s many weapons against cancer
Today, Roswell Park researchers are developing novel immunotherapies and new ways of using immunotherapy of many types, including cell therapies that work against solid tumor cancers, such as next-generation CAR T-cell therapies, tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy, plus monoclonal antibodies, oncolytic viral therapy, cytokines and treatment vaccines, including a ground-breaking vaccine for glioblastoma, SurVaxM, invented here at Roswell Park.
Last fall, Roswell Park was named New York State’s first cell and gene therapy hub, fueling expansion of Roswell Park’s cellular therapy research and cell manufacturing capacity. With the building of 14 new clean room facilities to manufacture cell products, Roswell Park is uniquely poised to streamline the development of new cell and immune-based therapies and bring them to the patients who need them. “Our patients will have access to therapies that they wouldn’t have anywhere else,” says Dr. Brentjens.
