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Fall 2010 Research update from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Climb to Fight Breast Cancer ® The Hutchinson Center thanks the generous supporters of the Climb to Fight Breast Cancer. T o achieve something tremendous, one must aim for the stars. When climbing on a clear night, mountaineers find they’ve done this literally. Others take a more metaphoric trajectory. The bold mission of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is to end the suffering and death caused by cancer. The Hutchinson Center’s confidence and optimism comes from being the home to the most dramatic success story in cancer treatment yet, the bone marrow transplant. Now, powered by the most advanced resources and a unique collaborative spirit, the Center’s extraordinary scientists pursue the next stellar advances in cancer care. Climbers summiting Mt. Adams in June, 2010 The high-altitude achievements made by participants in the Climb to Fight Breast Cancer are helping to propel these scientific innovations. Funds generated by the Climb allow Center researchers to pursue daring new developments in their quest to detect, cure and even prevent breast cancer. Your gift of support could now be contributing to a proof-ofconcept trial of a novel cancer fighting treatment, the purchase of frontline instrumentation, or the laboratory work of an intrepid young researcher. In this report we highlight two recent developments, a cutting-edge trial and a versatile specimen library. Both were fueled by private funding like that provided by Climb to Fight Breast Cancer supporters. Enhancing our own power to heal Immunotherapy is an exciting new field in which researchers augment and focus the power of our own disease-fighting cells. Two years ago, headlines around the world reported an unprecedented achievement: using an approach called adoptive T-cell therapy, a team from the Hutchinson Center had put a patient’s stage IV melanoma into remission using nothing but cells from his own immune system. Now Center scientists are applying their expertise in immunotherapy to create new hope for breast cancer patients. Center immunotherapy researchers Drs. Stan Riddell and Lupe Salazar have individually made important contributions to the field. Now they are joining forces, combining their knowledge of adoptive T-cell therapy and therapeutic vaccines to launch an exciting new clinical trial. No other cancer center in the country is as advanced or sophisticated as the Hutchinson Center in T-cell immunotherapy, in part due to Dr. Riddell’s groundbreaking discoveries. He and his colleagues extract key cells from the immune system, called T-cells, from a patient’s blood. They isolate particular T-cells with the power to fight cancer and grow a huge number of them in the lab. These cancer fighting cells are then infused back into the patient, where they seek out and destroy tumors. Recently, Dr. Riddell discovered the therapeutic potential of a subset of T-cells, called central memory T-cells, that seem to be vital to creating a persistent tumorfighting response. He is now integrating these memory cells into T-cell therapy trials. Drawing on some of the same biological concepts, Dr. Lupe Salazar has been working with her colleague and mentor, Dr. Nora Disis, on the development of a breast cancer vaccine. Unlike vaccines most people receive at their doctor’s office, cancer vaccines are being tested in patients who have already had the disease, with the goal of preventing its recurrence. The research team has had notable success in initial trials with patients who have advanced breast cancer, and they are now working to enhance the vaccine to increase its effectiveness and durability. There is evidence that T-cell therapy and cancer vaccines will work best in combination. In their new endeavor, Drs. Riddell and Salazar will combine central memory-derived T-cell therapy with the latest version of the breast cancer vaccine. They expect that the vaccine will help generate the kind of immune response that will allow the T-cell therapy to perform particularly well. They will also engineer a version of the patients’ T-cells that are more adept at fighting cancer cells than what the body produces on its own. This groundbreaking, collaborative trial is the culmination of a decade of work by each investigator. The trial underscores the ways in which contributions such as those made through the Climb to Fight Breast Cancer can propel us into the future of cancer care. Storing clues to future breast cancer breakthroughs Laboratory researchers rely on tissue samples to evaluate new insights. With the help of private support, the Breast Specimen Repository and Registry (BSRR) was developed to ensure that every laboratory discovery that holds promise for treating or preventing breast cancer can be tested using highquality specimens. Each year, the BSRR team collects and stores hundreds of new tissue and blood samples from consenting patients. These specimens are available to be shared with breast cancer researchers pursuing new paths in early detection, vaccine development and novel breast cancer treatments. For example, in a landmark breast cancer trial conducted at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, the Center’s clinical arm, Dr. Eve Rodler is using BSRR samples to identify biological characteristics that could eventually lead to ways to predict a patient’s best therapeutic options. Thank you Whether enhancing precise investigations to definitively answer pressing treatment and prevention questions or launching dramatic new approaches to stopping cancer in its tracks, Hutchinson Center scientists are using your contributions to make a difference in the fight against breast cancer. Thank you again for your generous support of the Center’s innovative research. For more infomation about the Center’s immunotherapy research, visit http:// www.fhcrc.org/research/immuno There are many opportunities for joining studies at the Center. For details, visit www.fhcrc.org/donating/other/study. To learn about the 2011 Climb to Fight Breast Cancer, visit www.fhcrc.org/climb. Lynn Lippert summited Mt Hood in June, 2010 Tel. 206.667.4399 www.fhcrc.org Mail Stop J5-200, PO Box 19024, Seattle, WA 98109