For several years I have been working in the laboratory trying to design ways to develop treatments for cancer that rely on a patient's immune system. The work has been challenging, because up until a few years ago, scientists were not sure that human cancer was able to generate an immune response in patients with malignancy. These are proteins that are in cancer cells that can be recognized by the immune system.
Some patients already have an immune response to their cancer.
Now our goal is trying to figure out how to make that immunity effective in killing the cancer cells. This protein is an oncogenic protein which means it is encoded by an oncogene, a gene involved in causing cancer. In some cancers this protein is overexpressed, which means there is much more of it presented on cancer cells.