Yibin Kang's immunotherapy work supported by Accelerator Funding

Recent advances that boost the body’s immune system to fight cancer have been extremely successful, but these therapies do not work for all patients nor against all tumor types.

Yibin Kang and his team in the Department of Molecular Biology propose to extend the benefits of immunotherapy to more cancer types. Recognizing that tumors subvert the immune system by miseducating a class of immune cells, known as T-regulatory cells, to suppress the anti-tumor immune response, the team plans to develop small molecules that can block this process.

With assistance from the IP Accelerator Fund, the researchers will identify molecules with potential to become drugs capable of stopping the tumor-induced immune suppression, thus shrinking established tumors and stopping their spread through the body.