National Children’s Medical Center Archives

2014

Scholar Grant

Dr. Catherine Bollard

Washington, DC

Despite encouraging advancements in pediatric oncology, there are still far too many children whose lives are cut short by leukemia and lymphoma. Even stem cell transplant – often the option of last resort for children with minimally recurring disease whose cancer repeatedly returns – cannot save all of these high-risk kids. For the thirty percent of recipients who experience relapse “the most difficult chemotherapy-resistant cases” there has been little hope.

Immunotherapy is one of the most promising areas of cancer research today. Countless clinical trials now underway explore creative techniques to produce immune cells or antibodies to recognize and destroy cancer cells. Adoptive cell transfer uses T-cell based cytotoxic responses to attack cancer cells. T-cells that have a natural or genetically engineered reactivity to a patient’s cancer are generated in vitro and transferred back into the cancer patient to fight disease.

With the recruitment of Catherine Bollard, MD to lead its new Program for Cell Enhancement and Technologies for Immunotherapy, Children’s National Health System (formerly Children’s National Medical Center) is poised to create new tools to help children for whom every other cancer-fighting option has failed. Among Dr. Bollard’s most promising strategies is the creation of “killer T-cells” to attack multiple targets simultaneously on leukemia and lymphoma cells.

The advantage of this approach is that the T-cells being manufactured are targeting four proteins present on the cancer cell, where other approaches have only targeted one protein. The likelihood that the tumor will delete all four proteins is minimal, meaning the therapeutic T-cells should retain their cancer killing ability. If this approach proves efficacious, early data suggests this treatment might have broader application to other types of solid cancers, including neuroblastoma and brain tumors. Further, this experimental approach is unique to Children’s National and is not being developed anywhere else in the world.