The treatment of diseases by inducing, enhancing, or surpressing an immune response is referred to as Immunotherapy. T-cell activation and inactivation requires the coordination of various co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory signals and most immunotherapies modulate these signals.
Therapeutic manipulation of immunopathways has lead to promising clinical results for the treatment of a number of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases and inflammatory diseases. Research in this field is rapidly evolving as scientists seek to identify the next generation of therapies.
Over the past 12 months I have introduced a number of pathways and proteins involved, which represent potential targets for drug discovery campaigns and I’ve presented assays to measure inhibitor effects on these pathways (B7-1 / CD28 and B7-1 / CTLA4; PD-1/PD-L1/PD-L2; BLTA:HVEM, CD47:SIRPα; GITR:GITRL; CD40:CD40L; CD137:CD137L; IDO).