The goal of the present project is to evaluate the better adjuvant-peptide combination in order to design a vaccine protocol for
pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDA).
In this optic my unit will study new (from unit I) and already described antigens associated to PDA looking at the induction of
specific CD4 and CD8 lymphocytes from patients (general program's task 1B and Task 3).
Those antigens will be the best candidate for the vaccine. In parallel we will focus on the CD8 activation (general program's Task 4).
We will try to understand the preconditioning effect of several cytokines and chemokines on circulating CD8. This is preliminary in
order to understand which of those will be used as adjuvant for the peptide, helping the immunosystem to revert the quiescent
phenotype otherwise generated.
This quiescent phenotype is probably the main cause of the lack of correlation among the presence of specific lymphocytes and the
tumor regression.
We will use in vitro techniques of cell biology and microarrays analysis. My unit will work in collaboration with the
gastroenterology and pancreatic surgery branch and with the pathological anatomy of our university, both very active units in
clinical research programs (see local background).