Irina Redchenko

My research interests lie in the field of tumour immunology and immunotherapy. My professional career to date has been dedicated to preclinical and clinical development of cancer vaccines in both academia and industry. I joined the Jenner Institute to initiate a Cancer Vaccine Programme in 2012. Cancer vaccines face the challenge of breaking immunological tolerance to self-antigens that often are the only targets available for vaccine-targeted immune response. A heterologous viral vectored vaccination platform developed by the Jenner researches has proved to be highly efficient in an induction of potent poly-functional protective immune responses against infectious agents. My team have adapted this vaccination strategy based on two replication-deficient viruses, chimpanzee adenovirus (ChAdOx1) and modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA), targeting a panel of prostate-associated proteins including the oncofetal tumour antigen 5T4 and evaluated this vaccination platform alone and in combination with checkpoint inhibitors and agonistic mAbs in mouse tumour models. The potent antigen-specific tumour-protective T cell immune responses  have been elicited to some of the self-antigens tested. 

Our preclinical findings strongly supported the clinical investigation of the heterologous ChAdOx1-MVA 5T4 immunisation regimen in the first-in-human trial, VANCE, which was completed in 2018.

Based on the encouraging safety and exceptional immunogenicity data of the VANCE study and on the preclinical results obtained combining the ChAdOx1-MVA 5T4 vaccine with anti-PD-1 mAb, we have started the phase I/II trial, ADVANCE, to enrol patients patients with advanced metastatic prostate cancer to assess the efficacy of ChAdOx1-MVA 5T4 vaccine in combination with PD-1 checkpoint blockade. Recruitment to the trial has been completed. An interim data analysis demonstrated that 22% of patients achieved a 50% or greater reduction in PSA. level compared to the baseline. This compares favourably to the 9% response rate observed in the previous anti-PD-1 monotherapy study, KEYNOTE-199, which evaluated over 200 patients metastatic prostate cancer patients with similar baseline PSA levels.