Investigation of the Immune Response to Gastrointestinal Tumors and Development of Novel Biomarkers for the Presence of Gastrointestinal Cancer

Therapies involving the immune system have already shown great promise in early clinical trials for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma and melanoma. One of the great challenges now facing this field is to extend these findings to other cancers. Little is currently understood about the nature of the immune response to more common gastrointestinal cancers. The first goal of this proposal is to collect blood and tissue samples from patients with early or late stage gastrointestinal cancers. These samples will be evaluated to better understand the immune response to these two cancers. The second goal of this proposal is to evaluate the specimens of these patients for changes and genetic markers that correlate with the presence of cancer. The information gathered from these studies will directly enhance our ability to design, conduct and monitor novel immunotherapeutic protocols for the treatment of patients with gastrointestinal cancer.