Cell Surface Molecules, Cancer, & Immunotherapy - The Lieping Chen Lab at Yale School of Medicine

Transcript

• 00:04When cancer or immune cells
• 00:06need to operate,
• 00:08they need a larger cell
• 00:09work together. So then the
• 00:11cell surface molecule is a
• 00:13communicating molecule.
• 00:15When cell get into contact,
• 00:17and then they deliver signal
• 00:19together, and then they tell
• 00:21others to do what.
• 00:22If this signal goes wrong,
• 00:24then the immune system go
• 00:25to chaos.
• 00:29Our early study, actually, in
• 00:31the early nineties, we found
• 00:33there's quite a bit of
• 00:34cancer cells.
• 00:36They do display
• 00:37a series of molecule on
• 00:39the cell surface, which
• 00:41deliver signal to the immune
• 00:43cell in the wrong way.
• 00:45So that cancer cell is
• 00:46not just sitting there and
• 00:47it just keeps growing.
• 00:50They actively actually deliver signal
• 00:52to our body's immune system
• 00:54and to shut them down,
• 00:56basically.
• 00:58So we are interested in
• 01:00two kind of areas. One
• 01:02is the basic immunology.
• 01:05The second area is to
• 01:06use that discovery to treat
• 01:09diseases,
• 01:10especially cancer.
• 01:14We have developed a receptor
• 01:17array which allow us
• 01:18to
• 01:19study
• 01:21more than fifteen thousand cell
• 01:23surface molecules
• 01:24at the same time and
• 01:26to see how they interact
• 01:27each other, how they signal
• 01:29each other.
• 01:30Now later, single cell technology
• 01:34can pick the cells, basically.
• 01:35You can pick a thousand
• 01:36or ten thousand cells and
• 01:37to study them in detail,
• 01:39especially what kind of molecule
• 01:41you express in particular cell,
• 01:43how they interact with other
• 01:45cells.
• 01:46So the purpose is to
• 01:48understand how
• 01:50these cells communicate
• 01:51and then how cancer cell
• 01:53communicate with immune cells. They
• 01:55become very useful tools.
• 02:00For basic science, whole purpose
• 02:02actually is to move them
• 02:04to clinic.
• 02:05PDR1, for example, which we
• 02:07discovered twenty five plus years
• 02:09ago. We found many cancer
• 02:11cells display this molecule.
• 02:13They will bind to a
• 02:15molecule called PD1 on the
• 02:17T cells and then deliver
• 02:19a shutdown signal.
• 02:21So that is basic science
• 02:23finding. You identify the molecule,
• 02:25you understand the signaling,
• 02:27you understand how T cell
• 02:28get disabled,
• 02:30that dysfunctional.
• 02:32With that knowledge, then we
• 02:35started to think about how
• 02:36to
• 02:38develop the drug.
• 02:39So the idea then is
• 02:41to develop an antibody
• 02:43to selectively
• 02:44block this PD L1 and
• 02:46PD-one communication.
• 02:51Eventually, you bring the antibody
• 02:53to clinic and it shows,
• 02:54oh, suddenly, immune system, like,
• 02:56recover. Okay? And it's not
• 02:58active to kill the the
• 03:00tumor cell. So now this
• 03:01therapy, based on this principle
• 03:03we found twenty five plus
• 03:05years ago,
• 03:07and become a standard of
• 03:08cancer care now in clinic.
• 03:11So all these integrate together,
• 03:14which is really to bring
• 03:16the basic science
• 03:18knowledge
• 03:19to treat diseases.