Dr. Katey Enfield, scientist at the BC Cancer Research Institute, has been named one of seven emerging researchers across Canada to receive a 2026 Terry Fox New Investigator Award, a significant national recognition that supports early career scientists pursuing transformative cancer research.
With $525,000 in funding, Dr. Enfield and her team aim to better understand why some patients with lung cancer respond to immunotherapy while others don’t, with the goal of identifying new biomarkers to guide lung cancer treatment.
“There is a global effort to understand why immunotherapy is only effective in some cancer patients,” says Dr. Enfield. “By gaining a better understanding of the biology of treatment response, we hope to improve the toolkit doctors can use to determine which treatments are most likely to work for each patient.”
While much previous research on the immune response to lung cancer has focused on T cells (a type of white blood cell that can directly kill cancer cells), emerging evidence suggests B cells (another immune cell) may also play an important role.
B cells make antibodies that help the immune system identify threats and flag them for destruction. In earlier work, Dr. Enfield and her colleagues found that some patients with lung cancer produced antibodies against a protein called HERVK, which is typically inactive in healthy tissue but can become active in cancer cells. Studies have also linked the presence of B cells in lung tumours to stronger immune responses and better outcomes with immunotherapy, however the reasons behind these observations remain unclear.
To answer these questions, Dr. Enfield’s team will use cutting-edge technologies to create detailed maps of lung tumours at the single-cell level, revealing how cancer cells and immune cells are organized and interact. By comparing tumours from smokers and people who have never smoked, they aim to identify patterns that explain why some patients mount stronger antibody responses than others. The team will also measure antibodies in patients’ blood to explore whether they can serve as biomarkers for immunotherapy response – potentially leading to a simple blood test to help predict who is likely to benefit from treatment or monitor disease.
“Support from the Terry Fox New Investigator Award allows me to launch a research program focused on improving how we predict immunotherapy response in lung cancer,” she says. “If we can identify better biomarkers, we could help ensure more patients receive treatments that are most likely to benefit them.”
This writeup has been adapted from an article by the Terry Fox Research Institute. Read the original here: Mechanisms Underlying Antibody Production and Immunotherapy Success in Lung Cancer