Neeha Zaidi

Research Overview

My research focuses on the development of vaccines for the treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer. We have developed a vaccine that targets the earliest oncogene in pancreatic cancer – mutated KRAS. Our vaccine is currently being tested in the clinic for patients with pancreas cancer, as well as those individuals who are at risk for developing pancreatic cancer. We utilize both mouse models and human samples to characterize the immune responses elicited by our antigen-targeted vaccines in order to both elucidate mechanisms of response and to develop novel combination immunotherapy strategies to enhance anti-tumor immunity. Recent efforts have included identifying and enriching for CD4+ activating neoantigens and using cutting–edge molecular dynamics to improve the prediction of candidate neoantigens. The second area of our research program is to characterize the immune compartment of the evolving precancerous microenvironment in order to fine-tune our vaccination approach by modulating the earliest inflammatory changes in the microenvironment. Together these studies will allow us to understand mechanisms of vaccine-induced responses and to identify inhibitory signals that we may need to bypass in the evolving pancreas cancer and precancer immune microenvironment.