Two researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania are among the recipients of the 2016 Clinical Research Achievement Award. The researchers recognized include Carl H. June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, for his work on T cell therapies to treat multiple myeloma, and Alain H. Rook, MD, a professor of Dermatology and director of the Cutaneous Lymphoma Program at Penn Medicine, for his research on resiquimod therapy for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.

The Clinical Research Forum recognized the year’s 10 most outstanding research papers written by teams from across the nation at its 5th annual awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., on April 12.

June is being acknowledged for his myeloma research progress, which included papers from 2015 on two different T cell therapies published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Medicine.  

In the Nature Medicine paper, June and his colleagues documented results from a clinical trial investigating a new T cell receptor (TCR) therapy that uses a person’s own immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells. The team demonstrated a clinical response in 80 percent of multiple myeloma patients with advanced disease after undergoing autologous stem cell transplants. In this trial, researchers modified T cells to attack cancer cells expressing NY-ESO-1, an antigen found in nearly 60 percent of multiple myelomas and previously shown to be associated with tumor growth and poor prognosis.

June collaborated with Edward Stadtmauer, MD, chief of Hematologic Malignancies in Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center and a professor of Hematology/Oncology, Alfred Garfall, MD, an assistant professor in the division of Hematology/Oncology at Penn, as well as researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Adaptimmune Therapeutics plc (Adaptimmune).

June’s second paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, with his collaborators Stadtmauer and Garfall, documented the successful treatment of a multiple myeloma patient whose cancer had stopped responding after nine different treatment regimens. The patient experienced a complete remission after receiving an investigational personalized cellular therapy developed by Penn researchers.

Rook planned and served as principal investigator on a study published in the journal Blood.

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