MACC Fund Awards $1 Million for Cancer Vaccine Development

The MACC Fund (Midwest Athletes against Childhood Cancer, Inc.) has announced a $1 million, three-year gift to the Cancer Center of the Medical College of Wisconsin to help develop a tumor vaccine. The gift will allow the College's MACC Fund-supported investigators to expand preclinical programs on tumor vaccine development and apply their findings to childhood cancers.

"We are excited that these dedicated researchers whom we have supported for years in the College's MACC Fund Research Center hope to have an initial vaccine ready for clinical testing within three years," said John Cary, Executive Director of the MACC Fund. "We are committed to supporting this type of translational research where patients benefit from scientific knowledge gained in the laboratory."

According to Robert Truitt, PhD, Associate Director for Basic Science Research in the Cancer Center and a collaborator on the project, the technologies needed to create vaccines that stimulate the body's own immune system to attack cancer cells have advanced significantly in recent years.

"We are using a novel new technology called 'nucleofection' to genetically modify cancer cells and create tumor vaccines by inserting genes, small pieces of DNA, that reprogram the tumor cell to stimulate rather than evade the immune system. These vaccines have been found to be effective in preventing cancer relapse in mice. Now, we're seeking to test the techniques with human tumor cells," Dr. Truitt said.

This cell-based tumor vaccine project is led by Bryon Johnson, PhD, and Rimas Orentas, PhD, Associate Professors in Pediatrics (Hematology/Oncology), and William Drobyski, MD and Carolyn Taylor, PhD, Professors of Medicine (Neoplastic Diseases), working along with a team of clinical and laboratory investigators based in the Cancer Center, Froedtert Hospital and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

"Our initial focus will be on neuroblastoma, a particularly difficult childhood cancer to cure," said Dr. Johnson. "We hope to apply what we learn to other pediatric cancers that fail front-line therapies - cancers such as relapsed rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma and osteosarcoma."

Dr. Drobyski will lead a similar effort to develop a vaccine against multiple myeloma, a form of leukemia or cancer of the white blood cells, which develops in older adults. The investigators hope to stimulate the immune system soon after blood or marrow stem cell transplantation (BMT) and prevent relapse of the cancer.

The idea of using a tumor cell-based vaccine shortly after BMT came from Dr. Johnson and Dr. Truitt's earlier discovery that the population of thymus-derived white blood cells, or "T-cells," that suppress an immune response is greatly reduced after BMT. They speculated that vaccinating shortly after BMT would allow the tumor-cell-based vaccine to be more effective. Drs. Johnson and Orentas tested their vaccine strategy in a mouse model of neuroblastoma with support from the MACC Fund and a grant from the National Cancer Institute.

"Our success in an animal model of neuroblastoma supports further testing of this approach in other cancers and its translation to human cancers," said Dr. Johnson.

Collaborating investigators include: Jill Gershan, PhD, Senior Research Associate, David Margolis, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics; along with Meghen Browning, MD, Michael Kelly, MD, PhD, Julie-An Talano, MD, William Grossman, MD, PhD, and Jeffrey Woodliff, PhD, all Assistant Professors of Pediatrics.

The MACC Fund has contributed over $25 million to the Medical College of Wisconsin since its inception in 1976. This support has helped raise the overall cure rate for childhood cancer from 20% to 80% during this time. In addition to pediatric cancer research, the MACC Fund also supports research into related blood disorders such as aplastic anemia and sickle cell disease.

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