Project 458649

Natural Killer (NK) cells are cells of the immune system that can identify and kill unhealthy cells by using markers that label cells as healthy or unhealthy. Cancer cells are good at using certain markers to make the NK cells think that they are healthy. However, not all NK cells recognize the same markers, so some will be better at killing than others. Understanding these markers and how they interact with NK cells will help us determine how to better target cancer cells. In my studies, we will test pancreatic cancer cells to see which markers they are using to trick the NK cells. We can then identify the NK cells that with likely fail to recognize a specific "stop" marker, but still recognize a cancer's "go" signals, and use them to kill cancer cells. To understand if this may work in patients, we will test our system using a mouse model that we designed to mimic the human immune system. By showing that NK cells can be used to precisely target individual patient's tumours, future work can focus on creating treatment plans that meet the needs of each patient and can target that patient's specific tumour profile.