Expertise in Immunotherapy

October 24, 2024

This page was reviewed under our medical and editorial policy by Alexis Boling, MSN-RN, CNML, director, nursing, Immune Effector Cell & Gene Therapy Program, City of Hope^® Cancer Center Duarte

Immunotherapy is a cancer treatment option focused on harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight cancer.

City of Hope is a national leader in cancer immunotherapy research and treatment, with four departments centered on conducting leading-edge clinical trials and developing state-of-the-art treatments for patients, listed below.

The Beckman Research Institute Department of Immuno-Oncology team works to expand the role of immunotherapy from a secondary treatment option for advanced-stage cancer to a primary treatment option for all stages of cancer.

The Comprehensive Cancer Center Cancer Immunotherapeutics Program team conducts research and trials to find new ways to prompt patients’ immune systems to attack cancer tumor cells, and also to find ways to enhance current immunotherapy treatments.

The Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute Department of Immunology & Theranostics, which was established in 1927, conducts leading-edge research focused on radioimmunotherapy, a radiation therapy that combines lab-engineered antibodies with a radioactive substance to help patients’ immune systems advantageously attack cancer cells by delivering radiation directly to them.

The Hematologic Malignancies Research Institute’s Cellular Immunotherapy Center team is at the forefront of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, a type of immunotherapy treatment that reprograms immune system cells to recognize and attack blood cancer cells and solid cancer tumors.

Experts in Immunotherapy Treatments

Immunotherapy is different from traditional cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which work by turning off pathways that cancer cells use to grow and spread. Immunotherapy treatments are designed to either trigger or enhance an immune system response to cancer. This allows the immune system to target and destroy cancer cells.

Treatments include:

• Checkpoint inhibitors, which reverse the mechanisms that cancer cells use to stop immune responses, allowing the immune system to launch a proper response against cancer cells
• Adoptive cell therapies, which use cell components or drugs to activate the immune system so it may identify and destroy cancer cells
• Viral therapies, which use viruses known as oncolytic viruses that target and break down cancer cells
• Vaccination with dendritic cells (a special type of immune cell that elevates immune system responses) or peptides (protein-forming molecules that may be used to help the body mount an immune system response against cancer cells)
• Monoclonal antibodies, which are lab-created immune system proteins formulated to mark or bind to cancer cell targets in order to help identify them and deliver treatments to them
• Immune effector cell therapies, including CAR T cell therapy, TIL therapy and NK cell therapy, which allow the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer.

City of Hope’s cellular therapy global leadership and expertise are far-reaching and include the following achievements. 

Leader in cellular therapy: City of Hope has one of the nation’s most comprehensive CAR T cell programs — an innovative type of adoptive cell therapy that addresses some of the hardest-to-treat cancers. In clinical trials, researchers at the Comprehensive Cancer Center were the first to inject reengineered T cells directly into glioblastoma (aggressive brain cell tumors), and they have created a prototype that may expand the reach of T cell therapy to many more cancer cell targets. In addition, City of Hope is the first institution in the U.S. to use reengineered T cell treatments for childhood neuroblastoma (cancer that begins in immature nerve cells), lymphoma and cancerous brain tumors.

National outpatient CAR T cell therapy expertise: City of Hope expertise and services are available at our sites in California, Arizona and Illinois. And while CAR T cell therapy was once an inpatient-only therapy, City of Hope has pioneered outpatient CAR T cell therapy treatment, with the majority of CAR T cell therapy patients at our Los Angeles-area cancer center now treated in the outpatient setting.

Pioneer in radioimmunotherapy: This type of treatment uses monoclonal antibodies to deliver radiation therapy (high-energy particles) to cancer cells. City of Hope is a pioneer in this field of research, and the cancer center has received National Cancer Institute (NCI) grants for 11 years, including one to conduct clinical trials exploring the effectiveness of radioimmunotherapy in lung, breast and colorectal cancers.

A government-regulated Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) production facility: Many substances used in clinical trials, such as monoclonal antibodies and vaccines, are made at City of Hope’s own Center for Biomedicine & Genetics. This manufacturing center, which is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, allows for greater quality control and timelier early-phase clinical trials because substances do not have to be obtained from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

Partnerships throughout the U.S.: In addition, City of Hope has built and maintained relationships with other leading cancer treatment institutions in order to foster scientific collaboration when researching, evaluating and developing treatments and preventive measures. These academic centers include the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Baylor University in Waco, Texas.

Leading-Edge Research and Clinical Trials

The immunotherapy experts at City of Hope provide:

• Leading-edge clinical trials for immunotherapy that are not available elsewhere, including CAR T cell therapy and lymphoma-focused SPORE trials.
• Collaboration with a network of institutions and biopharmaceutical companies, providing patients quick access to the top therapies and latest clinical trials.
• Use of City of Hope’s proprietary CAR T cell technology in preclinical and clinical treatments across blood and solid tumor cancers.
• Research exploring how best to collect and then genetically correct the defect in blood stem cells of patients with sickle cell disease.
• Research conducted in our Immuno-Oncology Department into different mechanisms for immunotherapy to target various cancers.
• Testing of new clinical-grade manufacturing systems to improve the efficiency of gene modification and stem cell engraftment for various diseases in partnership with biotechnology companies.

Find out more about our clinical trials.

Immunotherapy Patient Stories

Immunotherapy at City of Hope has brought hope and extended life to many patients.

Health enthusiast and mother of five Renee Bentson, of Covina, California, learned she had follicular lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, when she developed symptoms that included chest pain, fatigue and skin lumps. She chose to avoid chemotherapy and participate instead in a bispecific monoclonal antibody clinical trial in 2016. For the last seven years, she has been symptom-free and has resumed the healthy lifestyle she enjoyed before her cancer diagnosis.

Georgie Garabet was a 40-year-old father of two when he was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin lymphoma in 2020. After a meeting with City of Hope’s care team, he joined a clinical trial comparing the checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (combined with chemotherapy) to another treatment. After four infusions, he was symptom-free. He now urges other people who receive a cancer diagnosis not to panic because many treatment options are available to fight the disease.

Peter Valadez was a 48-year-old advertising agency employee in 2014 when he began experiencing persistent neck pain and tingling in his fingers. Before he was referred to City of Hope, a computed tomography scan showed that he had a high-grade brain tumor called a glioma. His prognosis was grim. And after two surgeries, radiation therapy and chemotherapy at other hospitals, his cancer returned, leading Peter to enroll in a 2018 City of Hope clinical trial testing a CAR T cell immunotherapy. Follow-up brain imaging has shown no signs of the brain tumor for the last five and a half years.