With the grant, Dr. Baker and his team are hoping to develop more effective therapeutic cancer vaccines. While Dr. Baker’s study focuses on melanoma, it has the potential for the development of improved vaccines for other cancers for which tumor antigens have been identified. "The lab work is focused on melanoma because it is relatively easy to see when you’re getting an immune response against melanoma. Plus, you don’t usually have to do any invasive surgery," he said.

His laboratory is interested in how the immune system distinguishes between the body’s own cells and foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria. Although cancer cells are our own cells, the immune system often recognizes cancer as foreign because cancerous cells often make proteins not usually made by normal cells. The breakdown of these abnormal proteins results in the generation of tumor-associated antigens, which, when presented to the immune system, can flag the cancerous cell as foreign.

However, Dr. Baker explains that this process obviously isn’t foolproof. "Many cancer cells can escape immune destruction. They make proteins that are weird, pieces of the weird proteins get presented on the outside of the cell just like normally, but they fall off quickly, and by falling off quickly they never get seen by the T cells of the immune system, and then there’s no immune response."

Dr. Baker explains that "the goal in the kind of research we’ve been working on is to develop mimics of these tumor antigens that can turn on the T cells [of the immune system]. And once they’re turned on, because they’re so much more sensitive, the hope is that now they will be more sensitive to the [cancer cells] that they were normally ignoring because they were falling off too quickly. This kind of immunological therapy we think has a lot of promise."

Dr. Baker collaborates closely with melanoma researchers and physicians directly involved with treating patients with experimental therapies. "What we see is that melanoma is a very fast, aggressive cancer," he said. "It really becomes a challenge for someone with really advanced type cancers to do this kind of a treatment. So the adage ’find it early’ is certainly going to be true for this type of therapy as it is for any other type of cancer therapy."

Seeing first-hand how rapidly melanoma can change, Dr. Baker is very sun conscious. "Wear a hat!" he exclaims. "In the summer months, even if I’m not going outside, I usually put on lotion that is SPF 15 just as I’m walking around, to and from the parking lot on campus. Even if I’m not at the beach or anything, I’ll put some of this on."

For more information on the Society’s research program and funding, visit www.cancer.org/research.

Pictured: Dr. Brian M. Baker

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