Jacques Galipeau, MD (Principal Investigator, Department of Medicine) and Paul Sondel, MD, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator, along with Collaborators Douglas McNeel, MD, PhD (Medicine) and David Beebe, PhD (Biomedical Engineering) and investigators from their labs, were recently awarded a 3-year, $600,000 Collaborative Health Sciences Program grant from the Partnership Education and Research Committee (PERC) of the Wisconsin Partnership Program. This grant, for their project “UW Innovations in Malignancy Personalized Advanced Cell Therapies (UW-IMPACT),” allows for collaboration between the three labs (Galipeau, Sondel, and McNeel), to generate data and examine the potential for the use of autologous B-cells for cancer immunotherapy, in combination with DNA vaccines and immunocytokines, for personalized cell therapies for otherwise incurable adult and pediatric malignancies, including prostate cancer and neuroblastoma, respectively.
Additionally, Anna Huttenlocher, MD (Principal Investigator) will lead a 3-year collaboration with Co-Principal Investigators, David Beebe and Richard Davidson, PhD (Psychology), entitled “Towards an Integrated Understanding of Stress, Inflammation and Immune Response.” This grant aims to improve understanding of the complex regulation of the human immune system and the influence of lifestyle factors such as glucose consumption and stress on this regulation. Congratulations to both teams!