Michael Aaron Morse

We are studying the use of immune therapies to treat various cancers, including gastrointestinal, breast, and lung cancers and melanoma. These therapies include vaccines based on dendritic cells developed in our laboratory as well as vaccines based on peptides, viral vectors, and DNA plasmids. Our group is also a national leader in the development and use of laboratory assays for demonstrating immunologic responses to cancer vaccines. Finally, we are developing immunotherapies based on adoptive transfer of tumor and viral antigen-specific T cells.

Our current clinical trials include phase I and II studies of immunotherapy for: patients with metastatic malignancies expressing CEA, pancreatic cancer, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer, and leukemias following HSCT. My clinical area of expertise is in gastrointestinal oncology, in particular, the treatment of hepatic malignancies, and malignant melanoma.

Key words: dendritic cells, immunotherapy, vaccines, T cells, gastrointestinal oncology, melanoma, hepatoma