General Description
The ultimate goal of this project is to identify tumor-immune biomarkers that represent prognostic, predictive, and therapeutically actionable targets in patients with neuroendocrine tumors. A tumor’s capacity to evade and suppress the immune response is a well-established hallmark of cancer. That harnessing the immune response could result in cure of a subset of patients with cancer is a revolution in cancer therapy. However, determining the potential of immunotherapy to be efficacious for patients with NETs necessitates an understanding of the tumor-immune phenotype which today remains unknown.
Research Objectives
- To characterize the tumor-immune phenotype including a comprehensive immune profile and tumor genome utilizing the Stanford neuroendocrine tumor tissue microarray that includes 1031 tumors from 690 neuroendocrine tumor patients.
- To (a) characterize the tumor-immune phenotype including a comprehensive immune profile and tumor genome in serial samples among 20 patients enrolled in a Stanford investigator-initiated clinical trial of intratumoral anti-CTLA4 (ipilimumab) immunotherapy with anti-PD-L1 (MPDL3280A) in patients with well-differentiated, progressive neuroendocrine tumors.