Engineering the Lymph Node Environment with Therapeutic Vaccine Depots to Combat Neuroblastoma

Background

Neuroblastoma is one of the most common cancers in young children, and current treatments for moderate and high risks patients are often ineffective. When tumors are cleared, drug therapy often leaves patients with lasting side effects or relapse occurs. However, therapeutic vaccines have recently demonstrated potential for combating neuroblastoma or other cancers. To effectively combat tumors, therapeutic vaccines must generate potent tumor-specific immune responses that are functional in the immunosuppressive tumor environment, and that are able to resist tumor regrowth during relapse. An increasingly important challenge for the vaccine field is design of vaccines that generate immune responses with characteristics optimized to combat target diseases such as neuroblastoma. In contrast to broadly-acting drugs or chemotherapy, these designer vaccines could offer highly-specific, immune-based treatments.

Project Goals

Establishing strong immunological memory cells specific for tumors has recently been described as a potential route to improve cancer vaccines. These cells exhibit high anti-tumor activity and can combat relapse that occurs after initial tumors are cleared. Unfortunately generating these cells is challenging. In this proposal we will combine direct lymph node delivery with engineered biomaterial vaccines loaded with signals to induce these immune memory cells. Lymph nodes are the tissues that coordinate immune response and controlled delivery of cancer vaccine components in lymph nodes could contribute to new cancer vaccines that efficiently generate large populations of tumor-specific memory cells that control and cure pediatric cancers such as neuroblastoma.