Dr. Antoni Ribas and his colleagues are conducting studies aimed at understanding how the immune system can be effectively used to treat cancer. The work is focused on the ability to activate killer immune lymphocytes specifically targeted to the cancer. A specialized white blood cell, the dendritic cell, can be grown in the laboratory and used to activate tumor-specific lymphocytes. Ribas and his colleagues have conducted studies demonstrating that dendritic cells could be genetically engineered to induce powerful responses against cancer, and have taken this approach from preclinical studies in the laboratory and in mice, to the treatment of patients with malignant melanoma and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Additional interests of the laboratory are the use of interventions that modify the regulation of tumor-specific lymphocytes and the modulation of the interaction of the killer immune cells with the cancer cells, with the goal of further increasing their antitumor potential.