Tumor control by genetically engineered CD8+ and CD4+ T cells

4^th World Congress on Cancer Science & Therapy

October 20-22, 2014 DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Chicago-North Shore Conference Center, USA

Immanuel Luescher

Accepted Abstracts: J Cancer Sci Ther

Abstract :

This lecture will focus on tumor control by genetically engineered CD8+ and CD4+ T cells. A critical overview of different strategies of cancer gene therapies including adoptive transfer of autologous of CD8+ and CD4+ T cells transduced with genes coding for affinity optimized T cell receptors (TCR) or chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) will be presented. Detailed mechanistic studies will be discussed on how adoptive transfer of tumor-specific CD8+ T cells engineered to express high FasL and IFNγ expression and CAR engineered CD4+ T cells, respectively, mediate complete and permanent tumor eradication. In both cases the transferred T cells reprogrammed the tumor environment from a suppressive one to one supportive for the induction and amplification of endogenous tumor-specific T cell immunity and capable to destroy established tumors. Future perspectives will be discussed, how tumor microenvironments can be manipulated to achieve tumor control by altering balance between immunity and suppression.

Biography :

Immanuel Luescher and is the head of the Molecular Immunology unit and author of over 133 peer reviewed articles. He is reviewing for different journals and committees responsible for grant allocations and recruitments. In over 25 years of research different aspects of activation and inactivation of cytotoxic CD8+ T and CD4+ T cells were investigated. More recently research is mainly focused on tumor control and reprograming tumor micro-environments. He is president of TCMetrix a Swiss based Ltd, providing high quality soluble MHC class I and class II ? peptide complexes in various formats.