CRI Awards $29.3 Million to Fund Immunotherapies for All Kinds of Cancer

This fiscal year (July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2015), the Cancer Research Institute committed more than $29.3 million in new funds to accelerate cancer immunology research and cancer immunotherapy clinical development, in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, Switzerland, and The Netherlands. The awards include:

• 26 postdoctoral fellowships for young scientists who are bringing creative new insights and perspectives to the fields of immunology and tumor immunology
• 13 Clinic and Laboratory Integration Program (CLIP) grants, which provide two years of support for translational laboratory investigation
• 7 Clinical Strategy Team grants that will fund preclinical research necessary to generate innovative new combination immunotherapy clinical trial concepts
• 4 Clinical Accelerator trial grants, including:
• A phase I/II trial of intratumoral immunotherapy and checkpoint blockade in a variety of cancers
• A phase I/II trial of a small molecule inhibitor or a vaccine, in combination with checkpoint blockade, in lung cancer
• A clinical trial of immunotherapy following autologous stem cell therapy in multiple myeloma
• An addendum to the phase I/II trial of an anti-PD-L1 antibody and a novel TLR8 agonist in ovarian cancer

With this support, CRI scientists are shedding light on some of the most important questions in cancer immunology, including the targeting of new immune checkpoints, imaging of the tumor immune microenvironment, immunosuppression and its part in the cancer immunity cycle, macrophages and their role in cancer immunotherapy, and the role of the microbiome in cancer development and progression.