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Most human carcinomas do not respond to immunotherapy because T cells are excluded from nests of cancer cells. The trafficking of immune cells into tissues, including cancers, is regulated by chemokines, which are small proteins that bind to chemokine receptors (GPCRs) that are expressed by immune cells and direct their migration. Therefore, when we found that the cancer cells in mouse and human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), which are devoid of T cells and do not respond to immunotherapy, were “coated” with the chemokine, CXCL12, we embarked on a series of pre-clinical and clinical studies to investigate the possibility that that this CXCL12-coat was causally related to the exclusion of T cells. The presentation will present the results of these studies.

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Prof. Douglas T. Fearon FRS FRCP FMedSci is a medical immunologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has been Sheila Joan Smith Professor of Immunology at the University of Cambridge, a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and a professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. Prof. Douglas has made contributions to our understanding of complement, B cell signal transduction, memory T cells, and, most recently, cancer immunology. His work in complement focused on the major role that inhibitors have in regulating the activation of the alternative complement pathway. His lab discovered that factor H inhibited the amplification C3 convertase to discriminate between activators and non-activators of this pathway. He also discovered that recombinant soluble complement receptor 1 (sCR1) inhibits both the classical and alternative pathways to suppress myocardial reperfusion injury.