PINT OF SCIENCE
FESTIVAL
Arming your Immune System to Fight Cancer
Cancer incidences has been increasing in the past few decades globally and are usually treated by surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Cancer Immunotherapy, a new arm of treatment that utilises the immune system, has been able to increase the survival of cancer patients when other conventional treatments failed. This form of therapy revolutionises the way we treat cancer and have been awarded Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Medicine (2018)
Thursday 23 May - Doors open at 6.30pm - Event starts at 7.00pm
Red Dot Brewhouse - 33/34 Boat Quay Singapore 049823
Offered Food
Supported by:
Regine Dress
Research Fellow, Singapore Immunology Network, A*STAR
How to train your cells?
One of my main interests is to understand how the cells in our body work - especially our immune cells. The ones that help us stay healthy or get healthy if we are sick. How do they work? How do they develop? How are they involved in diseases? And most importantly, how can we harness them for immunotherapy purposes!In this talk we will explore why basic research is so fundamental for tackling cancer, and other diseases. And why we need what seems to be the most basic knowledge about our body to find novel approaches to cure or potentially even prevent cancer!
Wang Bei
Research Scientist, Singapore Immunology Network, A*STAR
The human immune system functions not only to protect the body from various infections, but also prevents cancers from developing by detecting and destroying abnormal cells. However, some cancer cells find their ways either to escape from the immune surveillance or to block the immune system so that the natural immune response may not be strong enough to clear them efficiently. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatments that makes use of the body’s own immune system to combat cancer. In this talk, we will focus on one kind of cancer immunotherapy – CAR T cell therapy which boosts patients’ T lymphocytes to fight against cancer.