My current, vaccine-related research is focused on the analysis of the chemokines’ activity during immune response induction and on the development of chemokine-mediated strategies of immune response stimulation. My laboratory recently assessed the applicability of the secondary lymphoid chemokine, CCL21 for stimulation of melanoma-specific immune responses (Novak L, Igoucheva O, Cho S, Alexeev V. Characterization of the CCL21-mediated melanoma-specific immune responses and in situ melanoma eradication. Molecular cancer therapeutics 2007;6 (6):1755-64). My laboratory is currently working on the development of practically applicable approaches for the treatment of cutaneous melanomas using chemokines in conjunction with (i) melanoma DNA vaccines and (ii) suicidal gene therapy.

In addition, I am collaborating with Dr. T. Sato (Department of Medical Oncology) on the research project related to the development on novel approaches of tumor-specific immune response induction using IL-10 antagonism.

The membership in the JVC will allow me to closely interact with researchers and clinicians, who are involved in the research, testing and application of anti-cancer vaccines, which potentially may lead to the establishment of new collaboration project. I believe, these interactions will also allow me to extend my knowledge in cancer vaccines and understanding of clinical needs.