ACTIVATING IMMUNITY to Cure Cancer
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A senior mentor once advised Michael Verneris , MD , Director of Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy at Children ’ s Hospital Colorado , to abandon his plans of studying the immune system as a treatment for pediatric cancer .
“’ You ’ re wasting your time ,’” Dr . Verneris remembers him saying 25 years ago . His mentor worried that the mysteries of the immune system and cancer were too complex to make any meaningful conclusions .
“ I didn ’ t take his advice ,” Dr . Verneris says .
From the beginning of his career , Dr . Verneris was always attracted to the toughest cases , devoting his attention to patients with the most severe prognoses . “ Those were the ones who needed it the most ,” Dr . Verneris says . to reduce the recurrence of leukemia after bone marrow transplant by using blood from two umbilical cord units .
Today , he and his research team are studying how to grow or activate aspects of the immune system , including natural killer ( NK ) cells and T cells , to treat children with cancer .
Roger Giller , MD , who founded the Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Children ’ s Colorado 23 years ago , welcomes this next chapter of research that will inevitably lead to more cures .
“ We ’ re manipulating cells outside the body to have specific functions when they ’ re infused back into patients ,” Dr . Giller says . “ So they may have infection-preventing or -treating capabilities ; they may have anti-cancer properties .”
“ Here , that ’ s our vision – that cells are better than chemotherapy .”
MICHAEL VERNERIS , MD
Director , Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy , Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders
This determination perhaps made him perfectly suited to delve into the extraordinary complexities of immunity and cancer . At a time when everyone else was studying drug therapy , the largely dismissed field of cellular therapy needed him most .
Almost obsessively devoted to the study of the immune system and stem cells – “ It ’ s what I have thought about every day of my life for the last 25 years ” – Dr . Verneris was the first to discover how
Dr . Verneris says that this investment in cellular therapy makes Children ’ s Colorado different .
“ Here , that ’ s our vision ,” he says . “ That activating the immune system will be an important adjunct to more traditional therapies , such as chemotherapy . Our goal is to be able to use the immune system to treat diseases that aren ’ t currently being treated that way .”