|
Associate Professor Ian Hermans
Deputy Director, Malaghan Institute of Medical Research, Wellington, NZ |
Associate Professor Ian Hermans is Deputy Director of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in Wellington, New Zealand, where he leads the Vaccine Research Group.
Assoc Prof Hermans developed a keen interest in cancer immunotherapy while undertaking a post-doctoral fellowship at the Malaghan Institute in 1995, where he studied the key cellular interactions needed to induce T cell-mediated immune responses that can identify and eliminate tumour tissue. He then took a position as a staff scientist in the Tumour Immunology Unit of the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, at the University of Oxford, UK, where he examined how a newly defined series of cellular interactions could be exploited to make new vaccines. After returning to New Zealand on an HRC Sir Charles Hercus Research Fellowship he continued this work, establishing a Good Manufacturing Practice laboratory to manufacture vaccines for testing in clinical trials, and serving as Chief Science Officer for Avalia Immunotherapies, a newly formed company tasked with developing synthetic vaccines based on some of the concepts he has been studying.
He is also a principal investigator of the Maurice Wilkins Centre, a Tertiary Education Commission-funded research centre which has as one of its major themes the development of new platforms for cancer immunotherapy.
Novel Vaccines for the Treatment of Cancer
It is known that some white blood cells have capacity to develop into “killer" T cells that can recognise peptides derived from novel tumour associated proteins. These cells can therefore locate and kill tumour cells while leaving neighbouring normal cells unharmed. Vaccines that induce the activity of T cells therefore hold considerable promise as new therapeutic agents. We have engaged New Zealand-based researchers in immunology, chemistry, oncology and clinical-grade manufacturing, to design, manufacture, and trial new anti-cancer vaccines in patients. We have currently been assessing dendritic cell-based vaccines, where tumour-associated peptides are loaded onto a patient’s own dendritic cells in vitro before being injected back into the patient; these cells can migrate to the lymphoid tissues to stimulate activity of T cells that recognise the peptides they carry. We have also developed new, off-the-shelf vaccines based on peptides that do not require any isolation and manipulation of patient’s cells in vitro. An overview of preclinical work on these totally synthetic vaccines will also be presented.
|
