June 2, 2017

Chemotherapy sounds the alarm

Greetings! My name is Pat Murphy, a postdoctoral fellow in the Departments of Pathology and Microbiology and Immunology at Dalhousie University in Dr. Shashi Gujar’s laboratory where we study cancer immunology and oncolytic (cancer-killing) viruses. I received funding support from the Breast Cancer Society of Canada and the QEII Foundation through the Beatrice Hunter Cancer Research Institute to study the immune response to chemotherapies.

Previous work has shown that some types of chemotherapies and oncolytic viruses enhance the ability of the immune system to detect and kill cancer cells. My work has used mass spectrometry to identify molecules called MHC-I peptides that are elicited by chemotherapies on tumors potentially alerting the immune system to their presence. I am now determining the effect of these MHC-I molecules on anti-tumor immunity to inform the design of new cancer vaccine strategies. These findings are exciting and I am grateful for the support of the Breast Cancer Society of Canada for this work.

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