Venuprasad Poojary, Ph.D.

Venuprasad K. Poojary, Ph.D., assistant professor of the Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Department of Immunology and Microbiology and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, has secured a two-year federal grant for almost $1 million to further his research into creating more effective immunotherapy strategies for cancer treatment.

Among the more than 20,000 applications the National Institutes of Health received for the NIH Challenge Grants, Dr. Poojary’s application ranked within the top 1 percent. He received a grant for $999,094. The NIH has allocated $200 million for the challenge grants for fiscal years 2009 and 2010. They are part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 passed in February of this year.

Dr. Poojary’s research, “Role of TIEG1 in Foxp3+Treg development and tumor progression,” explores tumor pathways that cause effector T cells -- those that help maintain a healthy immune system -- to be converted to regulator T cells, which allow the growth of cancerous tumor cells.

Researchers have already created vaccines that are effective in controlling regulator T cells in a lab environment, but so far immunotherapy vaccines have not been successful when used on humans.

“Immunotherapy for cancer has not been successful because tumors exploit the immune system,” Dr. Poojary said. “We must now build on immunotherapy’s great cancer treatment potential by learning how we can make it more effective.”

Dr. Poojary’s research strives to understand on a molecular level how immune suppressor cells can be controlled so that tumor cells do not proliferate. He believes this research will provide him and his colleagues significant new insight to overcome the limitations of current immunotherapy strategies.

“We want to develop inhibitors for regulator T cells to use along with tumor vaccines and our goal is to block the development of tumor-promoting regulator T cells in the tumor microenvironment,” he said. “People have tried to deplete regulator T cells from the body using antibodies, but such an approach is associated with the risk of triggering autoimmunity in patients.”

The nearly $1 million NIH grant will allow Dr. Poojary and his staff to invest the grant monies in what they need to conduct work more quickly and efficiently. As part of the grant, Dr. Poojary will hire four people to assist him.

“If we can understand the pathway of T cells, we will be very close to determining the inhibitors for what converts good cells into tumor-promoting bad cells,” he said. “This is the hard step, but I am very confident that I’ll achieve my goals with the project.”

Dr. Poojary said it will be significant when doctors can control the conversion of normal T cells into abnormal cells that allow tumors to grow. “With this knowledge, we would be very close to having the immunological tools to more effectively treat aggressive cancers, such as locally-advanced and metastatic breast cancer, prostate cancer and brain cancer,” he said.

Dr. Poojary has been studying immunology since 1998 when he began his doctorate studies at the National Center for Cell Science in Pune, India. After receiving his Ph.D., he served as a postdoctoral fellow and later a research scientist in the Division of Cell Biology at LaJolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in San Diego, Calif. He has been with the Karmanos Cancer Institute since March 2009.