Immunotherapy in Protection Against Gastric Cancer

The project aims to understand the immune responses that develop against the gastric onco-pathogen Helicobacter pylori, with special emphasize on protective clinical antibody responses, which we have identified from patients with chronic H. pylori infection.

Our preliminary results suggest that duodenal ulcer (DU) disease can be caused by insufficient immune responses against adherent and inflammatory H. pylori, i.e., DU disease can be an immunodeficiency disease.

The project will investigate clinical antibody responses for therapeutic potential and during the grant period we will characterize antibodies for their structural epitope recognition vs. blocking of H. pylori attachment. We will investigate if the cloned and expressed mAb can protect against gastric disease in our novel animal model.

In parallel, we will vaccinatewith attachment proteins to test if they protect against gastric cancer in our animal model.

We coordinate the biological-functional investigation with structural analyses by NMR and crystal/diffraction, affinity-, competition and, acid sensitivity-analyses by Radio Immune Assays, Biacore and Calorimetry. We have full access to state-of-the-art microscopes at the Biochemical Imaging Centre, at our department.

Our new results open-up for novel use of both passive immunotherapy and active immunotherapy /vaccination, which could reduce the number of cases with fatal bleeding ulcers and reduce the risk of early death by “the silent killer”, gastric cancer.