Robin Shae Vander Pol

Houston Methodist Research Institute · Nanomedicine

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), pembrolizumab and atezolizumab, were recently approved for treatment‐refractory triple‐negative breast cancer (TNBC), where those with Programmed death‐ligand 1 (PD‐L1) positive early‐stage disease had improved responses. ICIs are administered systemically in the clinic, however, reaching effective therapeutic do...

Agonist CD40 monoclonal antibodies (mAb) is a promising immunotherapeutic agent for cold‐to‐hot tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) conversion. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive and lethal cancer known as an immune desert, and therefore urgently needs more effective treatment. Conventional systemic treatment fails to effecti...

Background Intratumoral immunotherapy is a clinically investigated approach based on the premise that local priming of the antitumor immune response can yield durable systemic immunity and avoid toxicities associated with systemic administration. However, direct intratumoral injection rapidly disseminates from the tumor, resulting in diminished eff...

Cancer vaccines harness the host immune system to generate antigen-specific antitumor immunity for long-term tumor elimination with durable immunomodulation. Commonly investigated strategies reintroduce ex vivo autologous dendritic cells (DCs) but have limited clinical adoption due to difficulty in manufacturing, delivery and low clinical efficacy....

Background Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is associated with extremely poor prognosis and a 5-year survival rate of 10% and remains a lethal malignancy. Surgical resection and combination with chemoradiotherapy are the current standard-of-care options, may improve long-term survival in localized disease; however, the majority of patients are diag...