Age, sex and meddling microbes: An update on cancer immunotherapy
- Time:
- Sunday, October 30th, 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm
- Location:
- Madero, Omni la Mansión del Rio
- Speaker(s):
- Tyler CurielDaisy M. Skinner President’s Chair in Cancer Immunology Research and professor of medicine, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Scientists' attempts to harness the immune system to fight cancer have met with mixed and often disappointing results. Tyler Curiel's lab is one of those working to find out why. He was the first to demonstrate that age makes a major difference in how the immune system responds to immunotherapy, with an experiment showing that a therapy that beat back melanoma in young mice failed in old mice because of a specific additional component of the older animals' immune response. Curiel's group then designed the first immunotherapy that works in old but not young mice, based on understanding age-related changes. Since that experiment, new work has demonstrated the role of microflora in mediating immunotherapy response as well as significant male-female differences. Curiel will review the state of cancer immunotherapy and discuss his work exploring novel combination therapies and strategies to make resistant tumors more responsive.
Social media hashtag: #cancerpuzzles
