Edus H. Warren, M.D., Ph.D., CLIP Investigator Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) accounts for 90% of all kidney cancers and is the eighth most common cancer type in the United States. While metastatic RCC has historically been considered an incurable disease despite the development of targeted therapies, immunotherapy may be able to provide more patients with better outcomes. While patients with tumors that have been infiltrated by “killer” T cells are more likely to respond to immunotherapy, however, not all of these T cells target the tumor, and so they still can’t perfectly predict who will respond or not.

Therefore, Dr. Warren aims to characterize the tumor-killing potential of the immune cells within tumors and identify patterns associated with tumor recognition as well as tumor evasion. Most importantly, he is testing the different specific T cell receptor sequences found within tumors and determine which ones are able to recognize tumor cells. Overall, the results of his studies may provide new insights into subsets of tumor-infiltrating T cells as well as help guide treatment decisions, identify new therapeutic targets, and provide the rationale for patient-specific cellular immunotherapies.