June is Cancer Immunotherapy Month

June 1st, 2015

The UC Berkeley Cancer Research Lab is joining the Cancer Research Institute to promote June as Cancer Immunotherapy Month.

The Cancer Research Laboratory (CRL) at UC Berkeley has played a key role in the development of novel cancer immunotherapies. In particular the idea of checkpoint blockade was developed by Prof James Allison when he was Director of the CRL, and led to the revitalization of the whole concept of immunotherapy (see The Story Of Ipilimumab). More recently the work of several labs on campus has led to the identification of cyclic dinucleotides as mediators of innate immunity to both infectious agents and cancer, and their use as potential therapeutics. In addition the work of Professor Raulet is leading to new ways to exploit Natural Killer cells for the development of cancer immunotherapeutics.