Innovators in Cancer Immunology: Colorectal Cancer

To advance the understanding of disease mechanisms in cancer, it is critical that researchers see everything a tumor has to show them. Leveraging PerkinElmer’s Phenoptics^™ Quantitative Pathology Research Solutions, researchers are now visualizing and measuring tumor cells and multiple immune-cell phenotypes simultaneously for the first time in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue.

Because of Phenoptics’ integration of multiplexed immunohistochemistry and imaging, leading scientists are now able to quantitatively capture systems biology data in cellular detail. What follows are brief profiles of some of these Innovators in Cancer Immunology and how they are using Phenoptics to discover new insights into the complexity of immune-cancer interactions that affect countless millions of patients around the world.

Dr. Jerome Galon’s laboratory aims to understand tumor progression and immune reaction against cancer by using integrative biology and bioinformatics to improve the therapeutic management of cancer patients. Dr. Galon and his associates hypothesize that integrative biology approaches will provide a better knowledge of the local interplay between immune components and tumor cells. Dr. Galon is known for discovering and developing the ‘Immunoscore’ for prognostic assessment of colorectal cancer. This was the first clear demonstration of the power of automation and cancer-immunology to stratify patients according to immune status and the likelihood of progression. He is now using Phenoptics^™ to go beyond Immunoscore to explore higher multliplexed biomarkers to reveal deeper details about how cancer evades the immune system. Dr. Galen’s expectation is that the richer detail afforded by Phenoptics^™ will lead to new treatable targets and better predictive tests for checkpoint inhibitors in colorectal cancer treatment.