HUMAN IMMUNOLOGY

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Research in cancer immunology at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has undergone a natural progression over the past ten years from basic laboratory studies of the host immune response to cancer to clinical evaluation of immune-based cancer therapies founded on the discoveries made by JHU investigators. This transition has been marked by a recent explosion of clinical investigation across a wide range of malignancies and therapeutic settings that has afforded the opportunity to conduct "bedside-tobench" evaluation of human immune responses. Whereas there is great diversity in the therapeutic modalities being studied, most areas overlap strongly in their techniques and approaches to immunological analysis. Modern immunological techniques for characterizing and quantifying human immune responses are complex, and it is difficult for individual investigators to assemble all the techniques that may be most appropriate for a particular project. Recently, a consensus was reached among investigators at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (SKCCC) that the capacity to reliably make such measurements would benefit many areas of clinical investigation and was worthy of CCSG support. Therefore, the Human Immunology Core Laboratory (HICL) described in this proposal was established in March 2005 to achieve this objective. Specifically, the goals of this CORE are to: 1) acquire, refine, and develop expertise in immunological techniques used in evaluating human immune responses, 2) establish standard operating procedures and quality control measures for a growing list of assays that are offered to SKCCC investigators, 3) communicate its expertise and availability to SKCCC investigators, 4) provide technical support to Cancer Center investigators seeking to identify or develop assays specific to their research objectives, and 5) serve as a repository for key reagents and cell lines useful for the study of human immunology which can be made available to the research community,