Katie M. Campbell, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow University of California, Los Angeles Area of Research: All Cancers Checkpoint immunotherapies that block the PD-1 pathway have revolutionized cancer treatment, resulting in remarkable response rates in cancers that have historically been very hard to treat. Accordingly, thousands of clinical trials have now been designed to combine PD-1 blockade with other cutting-edge therapies. However, it’s still not understood what factors determine which patients’ tumors will respond to immunotherapy and which won’t. To improve our understanding of these factors, Dr. Campbell will analyze next generation sequencing data from more than 250 patients across four groups, including pre-treatment, on-treatment, and relapsed tumor samples. Her goal is to glean important insights that might enable better to identify better predictors of response and resistance to PD-1 immunotherapy. This comprehensive approach will allow her team to shed light on the mechanisms that drive interactions between tumor cells and immune cells. Furthermore, this dataset will be used to evaluate two additional opportunities through which patients’ tumors might be sensitized to immunotherapy. Overall, her studies aim to uncover insights with important clinical implications, including the identification of novel or alternative treatments for the patients who do not currently respond to current immunotherapies. Projects and Grants Immunogenomics approaches to elucidate response and resistance mechanisms to PD-1 blockade University of California, Los Angeles | All Cancers | 2020 | Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD
