Spring 2025
By Kathy Clute
Photography by Sam Ogden
Nearly $2.2 million in grants from the California-based Troper Wojcicki Foundation will fund advances in a personalized anti-cancer vaccine and more effective treatments for a rare form of lung cancer.
Catherine Wu, MD, received an award to create a new, more powerful version of the NeoVax vaccine that she and her colleagues developed. She is chief of the Division of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies and the Lavine Family Chair in Preventative Cancer Therapies at Dana-Farber.
NeoVax recognizes the distinctive protein fragments (neoantigens) on the surface of an individual’s cancer cells and trains the body’s immune system to attack the tumor. It is being tested in clinical trials for a number of cancers.
The new version of the vaccine will be a whole tumor cell vaccine known as AMPVax, or Artificial Mini-Proteome Vaccine. It is expected to be more effective, as well as cheaper and faster to produce, Wu said.
“AMPVax is a revolutionary approach to preparing a personal cancer vaccine because it mimics the entire set of proteins produced by a particular patient’s tumor cells rather than just those we can detect by current RNA sequencing techniques,” she explained. “By targeting the full complement of neoantigens, we can more effectively trigger the immune system to kill the tumor cells.”
The Troper Wojcicki Foundation also awarded a grant to Matthew Meyerson, MD, PhD, for his research with Pasi Jänne, MD, PhD, on a new therapy for a rare subset of non-small cell lung cancers known as ERBB2 mutant lung cancers. Meyerson is director of Cancer Genomics and the Charles A. Dana Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at Dana-Farber. Jänne is director of the Belfer Center for Applied Cancer Science, director of the Chen-Huang Center for EGFR-Mutant Lung Cancers, and the David M. Livingston, MD, Chair at Dana-Farber.
Most commonly found in women and non-smokers, ERBB2 mutant lung cancer is caused by mutations in a gene called ERBB2, which can be thought of as a switch that helps control how cells grow and divide. Mutations cause the switch to be stuck in the “on” position, causing the cells to multiply too quickly and form a tumor.
“The best available therapies are beneficial, leading to a median overall survival of 18 months,” said Meyerson, “but we want to find out if a treatment program that uses a combination of drugs can enable patients to live even longer.”
“We are so pleased to provide critical support for these pioneering projects,” said Nadia Litterman, PhD, the director of scientific affairs and partnerships for the Troper Wojcicki Foundation, which was founded by the late YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and her husband, Dennis Troper. “It’s exciting to imagine how much patients will benefit.”