Immunological & Biomedical Successes of Treating/Curing Refractory/Untreatable Diseases (NC) (NPF)*
September 29 - October 10, 2025 (2 weeks)
Intro Heading link
PREREQUISITES AND PLACEMENT IN THE CURRICULUM:
Successful completion of the Phase 1 curriculum
PURPOSE:
Immunology & biomedical science advance rapidly, promote clinical innovations and lead to game-changing medical practice from cutting-edge diagnosis to FDA-approvals of revolutionary therapeutics including cure or remission of previously untreatable/refractory diseases.
Year 4 medical students with career interests will be attracted to this course “Immunological & Biomedical Successes of Treating/Curing Refractory/Untreatable Diseases” for in-depth learning, critical thinking, skill-gaining and potential involving of those game-changing therapeutics or research. These aspects are important additions to the overall curriculum, providing comprehensive educational processes for clinical practice and career development.
Participating Faculty:
Zheng W Chen, MD, PhD, Professor/Director
Maureen Richards, PhD. Assistant Dean
Sam Pope, JD, PhD, Associate Professor
OBJECTIVES (Theme Questions):
Topic #1: T cell exhaustion and Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICI) Therapy for previously-untreatable/refractory diseases
- Discuss immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI) and ICI blockade mechanisms whereby FDA-approved ICI treatments restore exhausted T cell effector function leading to anti-cancer immunity or pathogens clearance.
- Understand what T cell subsets are targeted by ICI, and how they eliminate cancer cells.
- Name the prototype (successful examples) of ICI therapeutic effects in late-stage metastatic cancers.
- Understand ICI treatments are shifted from end-stage cancers to early-stage cancers or locally-advanced cancers. Can you give some examples of effectiveness
- Discuss why ICI therapy has provided lasting remission and even cures for a subset of cancer patients carrying specific genome types(precision medicine).
- Describe adverse effects of ICI therapy and managing principles.
Topic #2A: Unconventional T cells (γδ T/ MAIT/ NKT) versus conventional T cells (CD4/CD8) in immunity and therapeutics
- Describe how unconventional γδ T/MAIT/ NKT cells differ from CD4/CD8 T cells in T cell receptor repertoires, antigens of recognition and presenting molecules.
- Understand attractive effector features of unconventional T cell populations: e.g. pleiotropic effector functions, MHC-independent cytotoxic killing of cancer cells and infected/diseased cells compared with CD8 T cells and NK cells.
- Understand the immunity prototype in which non-peptide phosphoantigen-specific γδ T cells contribute to fast-acting (innate-like) mucosal immunity to infections.
- Understand that tumor-infiltrating γδ T cells correlate to favorable predictor of tumor outcome, and explain fundamentals for allogeneic γδ T cell transfer therapy against cancers.
Topic #2B: Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) or T cell receptor (TCR) therapy against refractory/untreatable cancers.
- Define antigen-specificities for TIL therapy and TCR therapy.
- Describe similarity and difference in targeted antigens and manufacturing procedures between TIL therapy, TCR therapy and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for autologous adoptive transfer (infusion) treatments.
- Discuss representative precision medicine/therapies in which TIL and TCR-transduced T cells can induce therapeutic effects against selected cancers (recognize and attack cancer cells or diseased cells).
- Comparatively discuss 1st FDA approved TIL therapy and 1st TCR therapy in terms of efficacious treatments of refractory/untreatable solid tumors.
Topic #2C: Revolutionary chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell Therapy for treating/curing refractory/untreatable cancers
- Define CAR molecular features and describe why infused CAR T cells can proliferate/exist in the patients for longer time (up to 10 years) than TIL and TCR-transduced T cells.
- Describe principle and steps of CAR T cell therapy against blood cancers.
- Understand why TIL therapy, TCR therapy and CAR T cell therapy have different efficacious applications for solid tumors and blood cancers.
- Discuss why CAR T cell therapy can serve as living drug for blood cancers, with long-term remission or cure in some subsets of cancer patients.
- Understand how evolving CAR T cell therapy can also treat solid tumors.
- Explain why CD19 CAR T cell therapy may induce cytokine release syndrome and long-term toxicities such as cytopenias and hypogammaglobulinaemia.
Topic #2D: CAR T cell therapy for autoimmune diseases/others and Immune innovations for better CAR T therapeutics
- Understand why CAR T cell therapy is evolving to treat other diseases beyond cancers, including HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
- Describe how CAR T cell therapeutics induce remission for refractory autoimmune diseases.
- Understand how ongoing immune innovations can improve CAR T cell therapy efficacy.
- Understand the ground-breaking observation that using a trick from cancer can develop super-charged CAR-T cells that melt tumours.
Topic #3: Broad-protective trained immunity vaccines & cutting-edge cancer vaccines; Topic #4 Cytokine signals targeted as immune interventions in treatments of refractory diseases.
- Define trained immunity
- Discuss innate-immune-cell heterologous “memory” protection(trained immunity) in contrast with classical vaccine memory immunity.
- Understand mechanisms whereby live-attenuated vaccines/infections confer broad trained immunity against infections/diseases in pediatrics and adults.
- Describe a FDA-approved therapeutic vaccine and its mechanism against blader cancer.
- Discuss a FDA-approved engineered cytokine that facilitates cure of refractory hepatitis C infection and understand the mechanism of cytokine signaling.
- Describe FDA-approved cytokines-targeted immune interventions in treatments of refractory autoimmune diseases.
Topic #5: Nanobiotech-innovated medicines in immunity/therapeutics; Topic #6: Engineered monoclonal antibodies (mAb) including bispecific Ab in immunity and therapeutics
- Understand and discuss biomedical aspects of nanotechnology, particularly the formulation/delivery of nano-medicines to targeted cells in immunity and therapeutics.
- Describe prototypes of nanotech-innovated products as approved by FDA for disease prevention and therapeutics as well as evolving applications against cancers/autoimmune diseases/infections.
- Discuss prototypes of FDA-approved engineered monoclonal mAb including bispecific Ab in present and evolving prevention and therapeutics.
- Describe immune mechanisms whereby engineered mAb work against cancers/infections/ autoimmune diseases.
- Discuss common side effects and managing principles of nanotech-innovated medicine and mAb-based products.
Topic #7: Gene Therapy/Stem Cell- Therapy for Disease Cure, and Game-Changing HIV Prevention
- Understand the FDA-approved Gene Therapy for Bladder Cancer, and complete clinical response in a subset of patients.
- Understand 1st FDA-approved CRISPR CAS-9-based gene therapy and mechanism of action for the representative genetic disease (sickle cell disease).
- Discuss host-pathogen interaction in the context of HIV and host genetic factors for ‘HIV cure’ strategies.
- Discuss combined Gene and Stem-cell therapies for 7 cure cases of HIV eradication.
- Describe the game-changing HIV prevention– drug-based pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV acquisition.
COMPETENCIES:
At the end of this experience the student should be able to:
- Engage/Apply the principles of FDA-approved immunotherapy/gene therapy/HIV prevention and evidence-based medicine.
- Gain and consolidate skills/capabilities for in-depth learning and evaluating publications/data through engaging scientific presentation/discussions and learning topics of present/evolving therapeutics.
- Understand common themes/experiences of patients and health professionals in immunotherapy-related aspects of anxiety, complexity and distress/despair as well as mitigation strategies.
- Combine knowledges of immunological, biomedical, clinical, and cognate sciences as well as health ethics to meet relevant graduation requirements/competences.
INSTRUCTIONAL FEATURE:
The Course ELEC 537 will be a Zoom-online only course. The two-week course will have multiple topics, and each topic includes the following two sessions/activities:
(i) Topic Learning session/in-depth learning activities, in which all students will attend/watch short video(s) PPT/ lectures/theme questions presented by NIH-funded experts. Then each of students groups will read/discuss group-specific paper(s)/theme questions and develop short PPT slides presenting background/rationale/major findings/conclusive points in the paper(s) in the context of present/evolving immunotherapy/gene-/stem cell-therapy/HIV prevention;
(ii) Topic(paper) Engagement session, which enables all groups/faculty to experience and engage students’ presentations and topic papers discussion.
Faculty will be involved daily, particularly will meet with students to instruct Topic Learning and Topic/Paper presentations/engagements.
Through Topic Learning and Engagement/paper discussions, students will be able to gain/consolidate skills/capabilities for learning/presenting/evaluating/engaging immunological and biomedical successes of treating/curing untreatable or refractory diseases. These skills/capabilities will facilitate students’ clinical/academic career development.
ASSESSMENT:
This is a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory course. In order to pass the course, students must complete all assigned online modules, attend/participate in all online activities including mandatory presentations and engagement sessions. Any missed session may require a make-up assignment. If a student is unable to make their assigned session, he or she should reach out to discuss with assigned faculty members their progress that week. Students need to email their PPT slides to Instructor for record after engagement sessions. The faculty will provide feedback comments to students, with final course grades. Students may submit completion certificates for any online modules where one exists.
Administrative Information Heading link
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Program Number
ELEC 537
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Program Contacts
Program Director: Zheng Chen, MD, PhD
Email: zchen@uic.edu -
Program Information
Duration: 2 Weeks
Night Call: No
Weekends: No
Students Accepted: Max. 35
Lectures/Conferences/Faculty hours per week: Approximately 12-18 hours per week
Laboratory hours per week: none
Independent Study hours per week: ≥30 hours of work/week
Inpatient hours per week: none
Outpatient hours per week: none
Total number of hours per week: varies
Number of weeks of credit: 2