Create an Adult Immunotherapy Network

Immunotherapy leverages the ability of the immune system to recognize and destroy infected, damaged, and abnormal cells. This type of cancer treatment trains and augments immune cells to recognize and kill cancer cells by distinguishing them from normal cells. However, several challenges need to be addressed to improve the effectiveness of immunotherapy.

While there has been some promising success in treating certain cancers with immunotherapy, it has been less effective for other cancers. Safely and effectively targeting cancer cells without harming normal tissues is often more difficult in solid tumors than blood and bone cancers. The tumor’s microenvironment may also suppress the immune system, limiting its ability to fight off the cancer.

This Cancer Moonshot recommendation is focused on developing new immunotherapies, improving the effectiveness of current immunotherapy treatments, and creating vaccines that will prevent new cancer cases to reduce the burden of cancer in adults.

The Immuno-Oncology Translational Network (IOTN)

Learn More About the IOTN

The IOTN is accelerating immuno-oncology through collaboration.

The collaborative Immuno-Oncology Translational Network is working to accelerate the discovery of new immune targets for cancer treatments and the development of new immunotherapies to treat and prevent adult cancers.

Researchers working on IOTN Immunotherapy Research Projects are investigating interactions between tumors and the immune system, identifying new targets for immunotherapies, examining the development of resistance to immunotherapies, and testing new immunotherapies in preclinical studies. IOTN Immunoprevention Research Projects are identifying targets for immunoprevention approaches in pre-cancers and designing early interventions, like cancer vaccines, to prevent high-risk adult cancers in adults. Researchers working on IOTN Research Projects for Mitigating Immune-Related Adverse Events are investigating ways to eliminate or reduce harmful side effects caused by immunotherapies.

Investigators with the IOTN Immuno-Engineering to Improve Immunotherapy (i3) Centers are using bioengineering and systems biology approaches to design more effective, safer, and broadly available immunotherapies.

The network includes a Cellular Immunotherapy Data Resource (CIDR) that collects information about patients receiving cell-based immunotherapies, which can inform future studies of immunotherapeutic treatments. The IOTN Data Management and Resource Sharing Center (DMRC) supports the data analysis needs of the IOTN, promotes collaboration between IOTN investigators, and outreach of the network to the cancer research community. In addition to their work with the IOTN, the DMRC facilitates the Cancer Moonshot Seminar Series.

Highlights of IOTN Research Progress

One IOTN research team developed models integrating clinical and molecular data to inform therapeutic options for patients with prostate cancer.

Another IOTN study found a combination therapy that reduces immune-related adverse events (irAEs) associated with immune-checkpoint blockade therapy in patients with solid tumors. 

The IOTN CIDR collects data on long-term outcomes of patients receiving cellular immunotherapies and makes it available to the research community to inform observational, preclinical, and clinical studies. In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the CIDR rapidly modified its forms to collect data and clinical outcomes of COVID-19 infections among transplant and cell therapy patients.

More information about the network can be found on Twitter at @IOTNmoonshot.

NCI Center for Cell-Based Therapy (CCT)

NCI created a Center for Cell-Based Therapy to focus on the use of living immune cells for cancer immunotherapies. Its mission is to support the discovery and development of new cellular immunotherapies to treat patients with cancer. The center is performing basic research of cell-based cancer therapies, accelerating the translation of cell-based immunotherapy findings to the clinic, training scientists to conduct immunotherapy studies, and providing cancer researchers with access to immunotherapy-related technologies.

Cancer Immune Monitoring and Analysis Centers (CIMACs) and the Cancer Immunologic Data Commons (CIDC)

Together, the four Cancer Immune Monitoring and Analysis Centers (CIMACs) and the Cancer Immunologic Data Commons (CIDC) form the multidisciplinary CIMAC-CIDC network. The network is addressing the critical importance of biomarkers in the management of cancer patients receiving immunotherapy. Each CIMAC consists of a multidisciplinary group of scientists with basic, translational, clinical, and computational research expertise. CIMACs are providing a wide range of state-of-the-art analyses to characterize the responses of patients in the NCI-funded early-phase immunotherapy trials using validated and standardized platforms. 

The CIDC facilitates network activities including optimizing data collection methods for immune-related biomarkers, integrating data from immunotherapy clinical trials, and building a biomarker database for use by the immuno-oncology community. 

Together with a public-private research collaboration called Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT), the CIMAC-CIDC network is supporting immunology biomarkers assays for more than 40 trials run by NCI national clinical trial networks and pharmaceutical companies. The assays are being used to characterize responses in patients treated in these clinical trials. PACT also facilitates information sharing across government, academia, and industry.

Pancreatic Cancer Microenvironment Network (PaCMEN)

The Pancreatic Cancer Microenvironment Network was created to conduct research to improve therapeutic outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer, which is the third most common cause of cancer-related death in the United States. In-depth studies of the pancreatic tumor micronevironment can lead to discoveries of vulnerabilities that could be exploited by immunotherapies.

For example, in one PaCMEN study, drugs called angiotensin receptor blockers, which are commonly used to treat hypertension, were shown to modify the tumor microenvironment and enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy in mice. This research has been translated into two clinical trials for patients with pancreatic cancer (NCT03563248, NCT01821729), leading to remarkable clinical responses.

Another group successfully translated their studies to an early-phase combination trial (NCT04161755) with immune checkpoint blockade, chemotherapy, and mRNA neoantigen vaccination in patients with pancreatic cancer.

PRE-medical Cancer Immunotherapy Network Canine Trials (PRECINCT)

PRECINCT researchers evaluate next-generation immunotherapies and combination immunotherapies in canine patients, which provides not only more effective treatments for these pets but also important insights that could improve the lives of their human counterparts. PRECINCT investigators are conducting canine clinical trials in pet dogs with osteosarcoma, lymphoma, melanoma, and glioma. Two of the canine clinical trials have yielded such encouraging results that early-phase human clinical trials have been initiated for children with osteosarcoma (NCT03900793) and adults with glioblastoma (NCT04642937).

Adult Immunotherapy Projects Awarded Cancer Moonshot Funding