Evaluation of Immune Responses to Multiple Tumour Antigens During Tumour Growth

Funded Activity Summary

It is becoming increasingly clear that cancerous tissues are not hidden from the body's immune system and yet, despite the generation of tumour-specific T cells and antibodies, the immune system does not often destroy solid tumour. Tumours express a large number of potential antigens (molecules in or on cancer cells that can be recognised by the immune system), but T cell responses to tumour antigens may be limited to only a few of these antigens (the dominating ones). These T cells could compete with any other T cells that have been, or are being, generated, preventing their expansion and development into fully functional T cells. If this is true, then tumours will 'escape' immune mediated destruction, as a T cell response to only a few antigens is not likely to be enought to seriously perturb growing tumours. In this grant we will use a well established mouse model of cancer to evaluate immune responses to tumour antigens during tumour growth and try to understand why other potential antigens do not invoke a fully functional immune response. If we are successful, we will have made advances that could lead to new therapies for cancer.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2002

End Date: 01-01-2004

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $451,980.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Diagnostic radiography

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Cross-presentation | Cytotoxic T cells | Immunotherapy | Multiple tumour antigens | T cell competition | lung cancer | tumour immunotherapy | tumour vaccines

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