Catherine Wu

Payment for services (e.g., consulting fees, honoraria, paid authorship)

Dissecting neoepitope-specific clonal T cell populations in advanced melanoma patients vaccinated with personal neoantigen peptides partnered with local and systemic immune checkpoint Inhibition

Project Narrative While immunotherapy, and particularly immune checkpoint blockade, has led to substantially improved outcomes in melanoma and other cancers, innovative combinatorial approaches are now needed to overcome primary and secondary resistance to these new therapies. The goal of this application is to leverage our recent work demonstrating that neoantigens can be therapeutically targeted in cancer patients by testing a personalized vaccine in combination with 3 agents aimed at enhancing vaccine efficacy in patients with advanced melanoma. By assessing clinical endpoints and by interrogating vaccine-induced T -cell responses with leading edge single cell-based technologies, we expect to learn about safety and therapeutic efficacy of this combined vaccine and to gain deep insights into the immunogenicity of neoantigens contained in the vaccine in relation to therapy, thereby potentially improving outcomes and informing future trials in patients with melanoma and other cancers.