Our immune system normally eliminates cells that have become unhealthy or abnormal, but cancerous cells develop a variety of tricks to hide from or weaken your immune response.
Jenny Gumperz, PhD, is among the UW Carbone Cancer Center researchers investigating new immunotherapies that restart the body’s immune response to treat cancer. In particular, Gumperz studies the dynamics between two types of immune cells: invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT) and dendritic cells. These cells can work powerfully together to improve the immune system’s response to threats.
“We’ve made the observation that (these two immune cells) move around together and form a physical partnership, and when this association forms they seem to help other immune cells overcome some of the challenges they’re facing in fighting cancer cells,” Gumperz said.
To help get promising work like this from the lab to patient care, UW researchers turn to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), formed 100 years ago by UW—Madison as the patenting and licensing experts that connects exciting campus discoveries to relevant industries for real-world problem-solving.
WARF not only assists with commercializing market-ready discoveries but also invests in promising research ideas like Gumperz’s and identifies how best to focus that research for in-demand needs.
Lab discovery
Gumperz has spent decades studying the body’s immune system, understanding the molecular and cellular interactions that help the body fight bad cells, viruses and other foreign substances deemed a threat.
Research showed that while the immune system can initially fight cancer cells a variety of factors weaken that response over time. Cancer cells can develop ways to disguise themselves as harmless cells, the immune cells become exhausted and aren’t as effective at attacking cancer cells, and cancer cells can take over immune signaling pathways and turn off immune response.
“With that recognition, it opened up this idea that we can get the immune system to attack cancer again,” Gumperz said.
Two of the main forms of immunotherapy are checkpoint inhibitors, which blocks cancer cells’ ability to turn off an immune response, and CAR T-cell therapy that engineers a patient’s own immune cells to better seek and kill cancer.
While immunotherapy has been a significant advancement in treating many types of cancer, it still is only effective in about 15-20% of patients. These treatments can also cause adverse immune reactions, ranging from mild to life-threatening inflammation, because of their influence on immune signaling pathways.
“Our immune system is prevented from attacking good cells through these major signaling pathways, and cancers use a lot of those pathways, so if you overcome them, you can end up with very problematic and potentially lethal aspects of the immune response against healthy cells,” she said.
The pairing of iNKT immune cells and dendritic cells that Gumperz studies “thread the needle” of being able to activate a tailored immune response without triggering widespread inflammation. Preclinical studies suggest this approach helps to overcome the immune system exhaustion seen in cancer patients and programs a longer lasting immune response to fight “micro metastases” of new cancer cells before they form tumors.
Taking innovation off campus
Gumperz connected with Beth Fischer, director of life sciences intellectual property at WARF, to explain her lab’s work and explore opportunities to bring this approach into patient care.
“I see a lot of really amazing research, and this was one of those meetings I came out of going, ‘Wow. This is really cutting edge, exciting stuff.’ And it wasn’t difficult for me to envision what a product could look like,” Fischer said.
WARF is now in the process of securing a patent for Gumperz’s approach and has provided funding through the WARF Accelerator program to help Gumperz conduct additional preclinical research to show the strength of this concept for potential investors.
“This is the research that companies need to see to get excited and say, “Okay, yes, I agree with you that there is a product here and you’ve helped validate and de-risk it for us,” Fischer said.
WARF Accelerator also connects researchers with industry experts that can provide feedback and direction on how to make their work more commercially appealing.
For Gumperz’s research, they are focusing this approach on ovarian cancer because of the need for new options when the cancer reappears after initial surgery and chemotherapy treatments. Ovarian cancer has a five-year survival rate of less than 50%.
“What we would like to do is use this approach during the period after initial treatment when patients often no longer have detectable cancer and try to activate their immune response to go and eliminate micro metastases and prevent relapse,” Gumperz said.
While Gumperz’s research shows potential in using this treatment in any cancer type, Fischer said focusing on one unmet need first helps open future treatment research avenues. She appreciated Gumperz’s willingness to take feedback and suggestions about how to position her research.
“Jenny has been a great, willing partner at every step,” Fischer said.