Summary of Immunotherapy

The researchers will take a personalized adoptive cell transfer and cancer vaccination immunotherapy approach to eradicating pancreatic cancer. Identification of expressed and immunologically active tumor-specific neoantigens in each patient will be performed in vitro and resulting neoantigens will be engineered into a gene incorporated into isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and dendritic cells. Expression of endogenous antigens will be displayed via MHC class I, while a different cellular model will express an identical engineered gene with an additional signal sequence that will excrete the neoantigens subsequently displayed on the dendritic cells via MHC class II. CD4+ and CD8+ T cells will then be activated and incorporated into a vaccine delivered to the patient.