Assistant Professor Northeastern University Boston, Massachusetts
Recent clinical success in treating patients with aggressive cancers via pharmacological blockade of the A2A Adenosine Receptor (A2AR) highlight two decades of research into the hypoxia-A2-adenosinergic immunosuppressive axis. The combination therapy of A2AR blockade and anti-PD1 therapy has improved clinical outcomes in induced tumor regression in patients with PD1-resistant refractory renal cell carcinoma, metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, and pancreatic cancers. This presentation will briefly describe recent clinical developments and then discuss advances in targeting this pathway to improve efficacy of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells against solid tumors. In addition, I will describe our novel approach to target the upstream stage of the hypoxia-adenosinergic axis using oxygen-delivering nanoemulsions to reverse tumor hypoxia/HIF1a-mediated suppression.
Learning Objectives:
Describe the recent preclinical and clinical developments in pharmacological targeting of the hypoxia-adenosinergic pathway in patients with aggressive cancers, including novel approaches with oxygen-delivering nano emulsions and CAR T cells.
Upon completion, participants will understand mechanisms by which oxygenation agent therapy eliminated immunesuppression.
Participants will explore novel approaches to engineer CAR T cells resistant to biochemical and immunological immune suppression in the tumor microenvironment