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How Our Immune System Can Help Fight Cancer

NCT01042847 · Status: COMPLETED · Type: OBSERVATIONAL · Enrollment: 169

Last updated 2017-01-02

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

There is growing evidence that our immune system can help fight cancer. This has stimulated interest in the development and application of tumor vaccines for several human solid tumors, including epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). A major obstacle to the development of these vaccines is that there are specialty cells called regulatory T cells that prevent the immune system from attacking all of our organs. These regulatory T cells also prevent our immune system for attacking cancer cells.

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), an enzyme that degrades an essential amino acid tryptophan that is necessary for T cells to multiply, however regulatory T cells are less susceptible to low levels of tryptophan, and can still multiply. This allows cancer growth and progression. This may be explained by genetic polymorphisms (changes) in the IDO gene, which may alter its function. Five of these changes in the IDO gene have been described. In this research project, we are asking if you would donate a small piece of your tumor and ascites to see if we can examine your IDO gene in the tumor cells and see if any of these gene changes are present. We hope that this will help us understand how the immune system works in EOC.

We hypothesize that genetic polymorphisms within the IDO gene alter its enzymatic activity and affect the outcome of ovarian cancer patients. These findings have the potential to translate into a method for predicting successful immunotherapy.

Conditions

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Winthrop University Hospital

    lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Jeannine A Villella, D.O. · Winthrop University Hospital

Eligibility

Min Age
20 Years
Max Age
90 Years
Sex
FEMALE
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2010-01-31
Primary Completion
2015-02-28
Completion
2015-02-28

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT01042847 on ClinicalTrials.gov