Members of the John Harty, PhD and Vladimir Badovinac, PhD research labs recently investigated how peripheral vaccination can generate brain residing T cells with the capacity to defend against brain tumors.

Led by Madison Mix, PhD, a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) and immunology graduate student, this study shows how various immunization strategies, including mRNA vaccines can elicit tumor specific T cell responses in the brain that provide long lasting anti-tumor immunity in models of metastatic and primary brain tumors. 

Iowa co-authors include Cassie Sievers, BS; Mariah Hassert, PhD; Lecia Pewe, BS; Lisa Hancox, BA; Sahaana Arumugam, BS and Cori Fain, PhD from the Harty lab, Shravan Kumar Kannan, MS and Mohammad Heidarian, MSc from the Badovinac lab, Sunny Huang, MD, PhD and Terry Belz, BA from the Carter lab, Rui He, PhD from the Salem lab and Fang Jin from the Aaron Johnson lab at Mayo Clinic. 

This study titled, “Peripheral vaccination-induced brain-resident memory CD8+ T cells durably protect mice against intracranial malignancy,” was published in Journal of Clinical Investigation.