100% of the race proceeds will benefit the University of Florida Foundation - McKnight Brain Institute with funds restricted to the Pediatric Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program.
The McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida is one of the nation’s most comprehensive and technologically advanced centers devoted to discovering how the normal brain operates, and how we can repair the brain following injury, disease, or aging.
According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, immunotherapy, also called biologic therapy, is a type of cancer treatment designed to boost the body’s natural defenses to fight the cancer. It uses substances either made by the body or in a laboratory to improve or restore immune system function.
While cancer immunotherapy has emerged as a highly effective approach for the treatment of several types of advanced cancers, including metastatic melanoma, advanced lung cancer and refractory lymphoma, brain cancer has remained a significant challenge due to the blood-brain barrier exclusion of many immune cells from the central nervous system and the profoundly immunosuppressive brain tumor microenvironment.
The team at the McKnight Brain Institute has developed several approaches to the immunologic treatment of pediatric and adult malignant brain tumors. Given the fact that even the most effective immunotherapies to date, which have been recognized as breakthrough successes, still only achieve complete clinical responses in roughly 30 percent of treated patients, there is tremendous potential significance in tumor responsiveness to immunotherapy.
Immunotherapy may work in the following ways:
- Stopping or slowing the growth of cancer cells
- Stopping cancer from spreading to other parts of the body
- Helping the immune system work better at destroying cancer cells
There are several types of immunotherapy, including:
- Monoclonal antibodies
- Non-specific immunotherapies
- Oncolytic virus therapy
- T-cell therapy
- Cancer vaccines
T-cell therapy
For this type of immunotherapy, some T cells are removed from a patient’s blood. Then, the cells are changed in a laboratory so they have specific proteins called receptors. These receptors allow those T cells to recognize the cancer cells. The changed T cells are grown in large numbers in the laboratory and returned to the patient’s body. Once there, they seek out and destroy cancer cells. This type of therapy is called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.
Researchers are still studying this and other ways of modifying T cells to treat cancer. Currently, these treatments are only available in clinical trials.
Tax Deduction
The Universtiy of Floria Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Tax ID #: 59-0974739