Identifying New Cell Surface Targets for Immunotherapy Treatment of Poor Prognosis Pediatric Brain Tumors

Immunotherapy is a treatment strategy for patients that utilizes their own immune system to attack and remove cancer. Advancing immunotherapy requires researching the immune landscape of pediatric brain tumor patients. This will allow researchers to identify targets that are found on tumor cells and are not present on healthy cells. Once targets are identified, therapies can be developed that target the cancer cells, bolstering a patient’s immune system, leaving normal cells unharmed and hopefully leading to better outcomes. Immunotherapy has been successful in cancers of the blood but more research is needed to develop successful strategies to attack solid tumors such as those found in the brain. Researchers will screen the database of pediatric brain tumor tissue provided by the Pediatric Brain Tumor Atlas to identify a list of possibly targetable proteins. If targets specific to pediatric brain tumor types can be identified, personalized therapeutic strategies can be created for pediatric brain tumor treatments.