My laboratory has two main areas of on-going research. The first area focuses on developing vaccines strategies that augment antitumor immune responses. Our group has extensive experience studying murine antitumor immune responses that are generated following vaccination with tumor cells genetically altered to secrete cytokines in a paracrine fashion. This strategy is already being translated into clinical trials. More recently, my laboratory is employing a transgeneic mouse model of breast cancer by inducing a controlled autoimmunity against normal ductile cells from which the majority of breast cancers arise.

The second area of research focuses on the isolation and sequencing of major histocompatibility complex class I antigens that are the potential targets of cytotoxic T cells. Cytotoxic T cells specific for tumor are activated as the result of immune priming by the whole cell vaccine. We currently have lymphocytes and tumor cells from patients who have been treated with a paracrine renal tumor vaccine. We are developing T cell lines and clones that can be used to identify the genes that encode for tumor antigens. We have recently identified our first human tumor antigen with this method.

Ercolini AM, Ladle BH, Manning EA, Pfannenstiel LW, Armstrong TD, Machiels J-P, Bieler JG, Emens LA, Reilly RT, Jaffee EM. (2005) Recruitment of latent pools of high avidity CD8+ T cells to the antitumor immune response. J. Exp. Med. 191: 541-550 [PubMed]

Laheru D, Jaffee EM. (2005) Pancreas Cancer Immunotherapy: Science Driving Clinical Progress. Nat. Rev. Cancer 98: 1070-1077 [PubMed]

Thomas AM, Santarsiero LM, Lutz ER, Armstrong TD, Chen Y-C, Huang L-Q, Laheru DA, Goggins M, Hruban RH, Jaffee EM. (2004) Mesothelin Specific CD8+ T Cell Responses Provide Human Evidence of In Vivo Cross-Priming by Antigen Presenting Cells in Vaccinated Pancreatic Cancer Patients. J. Exp. Med. 95:3011-3019 [PubMed]

Ercolini AM, Machiels J-P H, Chen Y, Slansky JE, Giedlen M, Reilly RT, Jaffee EM. (2003) Identification and Characterization of the Immunodominant Rat HER-2/neu MHC I Epitope Presented by Spontaneous Mammary Tumors from HER-2/neu Transgenic Mice. J. Immunol. 96:11476-11481 [PubMed]

Wolpoe ME, Lutz ER, Ercolini AM, Murata S, Ivie SE, Garrett ES, Emens LA, Jaffee EM, Reilly RT. (2003) Neu-specific Monoclonal Antibodies Collaborate with HER-2/neu specific GM-CSF secreting whole-cell vaccination to augment CD8 T cell effector function and tumor-free survival in HER-2/neu transgenic mice. J. Immunol. 10(12):1983-91 [PubMed]

Machiels JP, Reilly RT, Emens L, Ercolini A, Okoye F, Jaffee EM. (2001) Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin, and Paclitaxel enhance the antigen-specific antitumor immune response of GM-CSF secreting whole cell vaccines in tolerized mice. Cancer Research 92:10277 [PubMed]

Jaffee EM, Hruban RH, Biedrzyxki B, Laheru D, Schepers K, Sauter PR, Goemann M, Coleman J, Grochow L, Donehower RC, Lillemoe KD, O'Reilly S, Abrams RA, Pardoll DM, Cameron JL, Yeo CJ. (2001) Novel allogeneic granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor-secreting tumor vaccine for pancreatic cancer: a phase I trial of safety and immune activation. J. Clin. Oncol. 9(1):17-25 [PubMed]

Emens LA, Machiels JP, Reilly RT, Jaffee EM. (2001) Chemotherapy: Friend or for to cancer vaccines?. Current Opinion in Molecular Therapeutics 5(7):780-787 [PubMed]

Reilly RT, Gottlieb MBC, Ercolini AM, Machiels JP, Kane CE, Okoye FI, Muller WJ, Dixon KH, Jaffee EM. (2000) HER-2/neu is a tumor rejection target in tolerized HER-2/neu transgenic mice. Cancer Research 4:931 [PubMed]

Thomas MC, Greten T, Jaffee EM. (1998) Enhanced tumor protection by granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor expression at the site of an allogeneic vaccine. Human Gene Therapy 26:143 [PubMed]

Jaffee EM, Schutte M, Gossett J, Morsberger L, Adler AJ, Thomas M, Greten TF, Hruban RH, Yeo CJ, Griffin GA. (1998) Development and Characterization of a Cytokine Secreting Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Vaccine from Primary Tumors for Use in Clinical Trials. The Cancer Journal of Scientific American 13:363 [PubMed]