The PAIR Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Pathobiology of Adverse Immune Reactions Study: PAIR Study
IRAS ID
234192
Contact name
Andrew P Cope
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Our immune systems are able to find and kill infections, they are also able to find and eliminate cells in the body that have become abnormal (cells with the potential to become cancers). A failure of the immune system to eliminate cancer cells is often one of the final stages by which a cancer becomes something that is serious. The immune system is delicately balanced to allow it to do its job of protecting us from infection and cancer whilst not ‘over-reacting’ and attacking normal healthy cells (this is what happens when auto-immune diseases develop). The search has been on for more than a 100 years to try to find ways of boosting anti-cancer immune responses to help us overcome cancers in patients once they are established. In the last decade a new class of drugs has been developed, called checkpoint inhibitors that are able to drive the immune system to attach and kill cancers in some patients. Checkpoint inhibitors, work by interrupting the messages a cancer gives to the immune system telling it to leave the cancer alone. Or, put another way, they take the breaks off immune cells (called T-cells) in the body that are ready to attack the cancer cells but are being stopped from doing so.
Unfortunately the checkpoint inhibitor drugs do not know which T-cells to release and they have to potential to release immune reactions against normal cells in the body. This is the way side effects of these drugs are caused. We see immune reactions against many different parts of the body in response to these drugs. Not everyone will have side effects. Some patients will have lots of side effects or, rarely, side effects that are particularly severe. We want to really understand why some patients get certain side effects, whether the inflammation that can happen is the same as the auto-immune disease it may mimic and whether we can predict side effects before they happen to try to reduce their impact on patients in the future. We also think we can learn about why some patients have good cancer shrinkage and others do not by better understanding the reaction of the patients immune system to the checkpoint inhibitor drugs.REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/1950
Date of REC Opinion
8 Dec 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion