"Receiving this award isn’t just about adding another feather to my cap—it’s like receiving an entirely new cap. My role now is to learn from our community and to gather feathers to adorn this new cap.”

About DSA-Funded Research

Our proposed research explores a new way to fight a type of brain cancer called glioblastoma. Our immune system can be trained to recognize and attack cancer cells by targeting specific markers on their surface called tumor-specific antigens (TSAs). Finding these markers is crucial for developing therapy, but it is not an easy task. Most research so far has focused on only less than 2% of the cancer cell's genetic material–regular protein-coding genes, missing out on potentially important markers. We believe that a large portion of our genetic material called retrotransposons, which is often overlooked, could actually contain and express these markers. Our early experiments have shown that certain retrotransposons are active only in glioblastoma cells, not in normal brain cells, and that they produce powerful markers that can activate immune cells called T-cells. Building on these findings, we want to confirm if the markers we already identified are indeed effective against glioblastoma (our first goal). Additionally, we plan to search systematically through all retrotransposons to find more of these markers (our second goal). If successful, this approach could revolutionize glioblastoma treatment by harnessing our immune system to specifically target and destroy cancer cells. It could even work alongside other treatments like checkpoint blockade, offering hope for better outcomes for patients. This research has the potential to be a game-changer in the fight against glioblastoma.