The Systems Medicine Seminar welcomes Dr. Wencel Valega-Mackenzie, hosted by Dr. Skylar Grey.
Presenter: Wencel Valega-Mackenzie, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow
Affiliation: FDA/CBER/OBPV/DABRA
Title: Dose optimization approach of an adjuvanted peptide-based personalized neoantigen melanoma vaccine
Abstract: Personalized neoantigen cancer vaccines are a type of immunotherapy that can provide significant clinical benefits, eliminating malignant cells by leveraging the patient’s immune response. However, due to tumor heterogeneity, it remains a challenge for cancer immunology to determine the optimal vaccine doses for each patient. In this presentation, we discuss the results of a mathematical dose optimization problem based on a previous mathematical model that encompasses the immune response cascade produced by the vaccine in a patient. Given a fixed vaccination schedule, the optimization approach’s goal is to identify the optimal vaccine doses for each patient while minimizing tumor size and the number of activated T cells. We retrospectively perform in silico experiments on six clinical trial patients with advanced melanoma to compare the clinical benefits between the optimal vaccine dose and the vaccine dose used during the clinical trial. Our findings highlight the importance of mechanistic mathematical optimization to improve clinical outcomes in personalized cancer immunotherapy.
Date: August 20, 2024, at 4:00 PM Eastern Time
Venue: This presenter will be conducting the seminar virtually via Zoom. Join by Zoom or in MSB Room M-434, the LSM Conference Room.