Edmund K Waller, Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University, USA

Dissecting pathways that regulate anti-cancer immunity through analysis of gene expression in adaptive immune cells
Recent advances in clinical medicine have clarified the very potent ability of the immune system to recognize and eliminate cancer. Targeting natural inhibitory pathways that limit the magnitude and duration of adaptive immune responses have resulted in dramatic and durable anti-cancer immune responses in patients with a variety of different malignancies. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation provides a useful model system in which to explore the pre-determinants of effective anti-cancer immunity. Stem cell transplants using inbred mouse strains model human clinical transplants, and the roles of specific cell types and immune pathways can be isolated using appropriate genetic knock-out strains and inhibitors of specific immune pathways. Analysis of the heterogeneity and magnitude of adaptive anti-cancer immune responses in pre-clinical transplant models will be presented using data from deep sequencing of the T cell receptor gene during effective anti-cancer immune responses along with and gene expression profiling of specific regulatory immune cells. The goal will be elucidation of the immune networks that regulate anti-cancer immunity.