Cancer Vaccine Laboratory - LICR Melbourne Centre for Clinical Sciences

MELBOURNE CENTRE FOR CLINICAL SCIENCES

Research > Cancer Vaccine Lab

Cancer Vaccine Laboratory

The Cancer Vaccine Program integrates clinical and laboratory teams in order to better understand immune responses against cancer and to develop new cancer therapies based on these understandings.

Three research streams have been developed in order to achieve this:

(i) Cancer antigens- with a focus on NY-ESO-1,
(ii) Dendritic Cell (DC) biology - exploring the regulators of DC function including antigen uptake, migration, cytokine secretion, antigen cross-presentation, T cell stimulation and
(iii) Analysing immune responses that arise spontaneously and in vaccine recipients.

The program has been particularly interested in malignant melanoma as a disease for the development of these cancer vaccines. We have collected clinical data from our Phase I and Phase I/II studies, and characterised tumour antigen expression and also patient immunological profiles. Using gene arrays, we have identified molecules which are associated with different clinical outcomes in melanoma patients and we are evaluating the key molecular pathways in these human tumours. We are also assessing spontaneous and vaccine-induced immune responses against melanoma and have a particular interest in developing methods for targeting melanoma stem cells.

Publications

1. Gedye, C., Quirk, J., Browning, J., Svobodova, S., John, T., Sluka, P., Dunbar, P.R., Corbeil, D., Cebon, J., and Davis, I.D., Cancer/testis antigens can be immunological targets in clonogenic CD133(+) melanoma cells. Cancer Immunol Immunother, 2009.

2. Nicholaou, T., Ebert, L.M., Davis, I.D., Mcarthur, G.A., Jackson, H., Dimopoulos, N., Tan, B., Maraskovsky, E., Miloradovic, L., Hopkins, W., Pan, L., Venhaus, R., Hoffman, E.W., Chen, W., and Cebon, J., Regulatory T-Cell-Mediated Attenuation of T-Cell Responses to the NY-ESO-1 ISCOMATRIX Vaccine in Patients with Advanced Malignant Melanoma. Clin Cancer Res, 15(6): p. 2166-2173 2009.

3. Robson, N.C., Wei, H., Mcalpine, T., Kirkpatrick, N., Cebon, J., and Maraskovsky, E., Activin-A attenuates several human natural killer cell functions. Blood, 113(14): p. 3218-25 2009.

4. Schnurr, M., Orban, M., Robson, N.C., Shin, A., Braley, H., Airey, D., Cebon, J., Maraskovsky, E., and Endres, S., ISCOMATRIX adjuvant induces efficient cross-presentation of tumor antigen by dendritic cells via rapid cytosolic antigen delivery and processing via tripeptidyl peptidase II. J Immunol, 182(3): p. 1253-9 2009.

5. John, T., Black, M.A., Toro, T.T., Leader, D., Gedye, C.A., Davis, I.D., Guilford, P.J., and Cebon, J.S., Predicting clinical outcome through molecular profiling in stage III melanoma. Clin Cancer Res, 14(16): p. 5173-80 2008.

6. John, T., Caballero, O.L., Svobodova, S.J., Kong, A., Chua, R., Browning, J., Fortunato, S., Deb, S., Hsu, M., Gedye, C.A., Davis, I.D., Altorki, N., Simpson, A.J., Chen, Y.T., Monk, M., and Cebon, J.S., ECSA/DPPA2 is an embryo-cancer antigen that is coexpressed with cancer-testis antigens in non-small cell lung cancer. Clin Cancer Res, 14(11): p. 3291-8 2008.

7. Robson, N.C., Phillips, D.J., Mcalpine, T., Shin, A., Svobodova, S., Toy, T., Pillay, V., Kirkpatrick, N., Zanker, D., Wilson, K., Helling, I., Wei, H., Chen, W., Cebon, J., and Maraskovsky, E., Activin-A: a novel dendritic cell-derived cytokine that potently attenuates CD40 ligand-specific cytokine and chemokine production. Blood, 111(5): p. 2733-43 2008.

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Research Links

	Overview
	Tumour Targeting Laboratory
	Cancer Vaccine Laboratory
	T Cell Laboratory
	Uro-Oncology Laboratory
	Oncogenic Transcription Laboratory
	Joint Austin Ludwig Oncology Unit
	Centre for PET
	Key Technologies

Cancer Vaccine Lab Staff

Laboratory Head

Prof Jonathan Cebon
Email

Staff Directory

Jonathan Cebon - Laboratory Head
Eugene Maraskovsky - Honorary Fellow
Andreas Behren - Postdoctoral Fellow
Ashley Knights - Postdoctoral Fellow
Tamara Lowen - Research Assistant
Florina Lo - Research Assistant
Christopher Hudson - Research Assistant
Suzanne Svobodova - Research Officer
Matthew Anaka - Ph.D. Student
Margarida Brito – Visiting Scientist
Jitka Fucikova – Visiting PhD Student
Zdenka Bolcevic – Scientific Project Officer

Of Note

Grants

Jonathan Cebon
Hilton-Ludwig Cancer Metastasis Initiative 2007-2010
Melanoma Research Alliance Team Award 2008-2011
NH&MRC Practitioner Fellowship 2008-2012
NH&MRC Project Grant 2009-2011

Matthew Anaka
Cancer Council of Victoria- PhD Scholarship