The Power Within

In clean rooms and crowded offices, researchers at the Brown Center for Immunotherapy are reimagining cancer care from the inside out — blending chemistry, computation and compassion to make custom-built therapies for the immune system itself.

Matthew Harris Nov 26, 2025

THE FUTURE OF breast cancer treatment might take less than an hour to prepare.

A skilled lab technician in a clean room connects two syringes. One contains short chains of amino acids called peptides that mimic sections of a protein found on the surface of a cancer cell. The other syringe has an emulsifier that provides stability.

The tech presses the plungers on the connected syringes — slowly at first, then more rapidly, for 40 cycles — to combine the mixture into a milky white solution. To test the creation, the tech attaches a needle, draws out a sample and drops it in water. If it doesn’t disperse, the combination is a success.

The solution is ferried to an exam room, injected into a waiting patient and the magic begins — the production of new antibodies to attack cancer cells. “It’s the least technical thing we do,” said Christina Vaughn, MS, who manages the facility. “But it’s definitely one of the most precise.”

The process is another step in a push by the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Brown Center for Immunotherapy to turn lab science into real therapies for patients. Once thought to be valuable only for fighting blood cancers, the last decade of work in immunotherapy has upended conventional wisdom about the ability of the body’s natural defenses to fight solid tumors.

Since her arrival three years ago, Huda Salman, MD, PhD, the Don Brown Professor of Immunotherapy, has quickly built a team of researchers to accelerate that promise. Once-dormant labs bustle with more than 50 scientists uncovering new targets, designing cutting-edge therapies and making enough progress to launch five clinical trials.

“Our goal is to deliver therapies,” Salman said. “Not just publishing papers about something that could be a treatment 100 years from now.”

Sustaining that momentum won’t be easy. Federal research dollars are increasingly scarce, venture capital that once poured into biotech is drying up and the bar for NIH grants has risen so high that only a fraction of proposals is funded. In this environment, the Brown Center’s ability to control its own pipeline — from lab bench to patient bedside — has become essential.

“I am happy with the volume and the quality of our work,” she said. “I still wish we could accelerate more. The reason we have produced (clinical) trials is because of funds and resources, but we push forward.”

Pravin Kaumaya, PhD, at left, and his lab are working hastily to develop vaccines that prompt a patient’s immune system to fight cancer.

A VISITOR SETTING foot in Pravin Kaumaya’s office might easily miss a manila folder sitting atop a pile on a crowded desk. Even if they spotted it, they might struggle to make out hastily scrawled chemical formulas and notes: a pair of targets for peptide vaccines and potential combination therapies for cancer.

“That’s the future,” he said.

For over three decades, Kaumaya, PhD, has ardently believed that short fragments of proteins are the best way to leverage the immune system’s power against cancer. It’s why Kelvin Lee, MD, who leads the IU Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, approached Kaumaya after sitting through a presentation three years ago at a conference in Cuba. He had one question for the peptide chemist, then on faculty for 34 years at Ohio State.

“Are you movable?” Lee asked.

Initially, the answer was no. But over a series of visits to Indianapolis, Lee and Salman outlined a compelling pitch: robust resources from a Vera Bradley Foundation endowed chair for Breast Cancer Innovation, mentoring young scientists and eager collaborators. “They were very clear about valuing my translational work,” said Kaumaya. “I saw that it could benefit Indiana. It’s a fresh start.”

Kaumaya didn’t arrive empty-handed, either.

He toted a peptide vaccine for HER2-positive breast cancer that he’d been developing for more than a decade as well as several other immunotherapy assets, including several checkpoint inhibitor vaccines. It had even stood up to scrutiny in a safety and dosing trial at Ohio State. With refinements drawn from that study, the vaccine was ready for another study. All Kaumaya needed was a clinical faculty member as a partner.

Fortunately, IU has Kathy Miller, MD, a national leader in running breast cancer trials. She chooses projects carefully. Yet Kaumaya’s vaccine stood out for several reasons. It focused on an established target and was supported by robust laboratory data. And unlike existing drugs Herceptin and Perjeta, Kaumaya’s vaccine produces a broader array of antibodies. Even better, the vaccine might teach the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells.

“They’re all recognizing the same target, but there are slightly different components in different parts,” Miller said. “The potential for cancer resistance could be less.”

This summer, Miller and Tarah Ballinger, MD, each launched a trial to vet Kaumaya’s vaccines. Miller’s study is made up of patients with metastatic disease and assesses whether they see a benefit. Meanwhile, Ballinger enrolls patients with early-stage cancer after they finish standard therapy and gauges whether the vaccine prevents the disease from returning. What they have in common is testing whether the treatment — three doses dispensed over nine weeks — prompts a long-term response by the immune system.

They’re all recognizing the same target, but there are slightly different components in different parts. The potential for cancer resistance could be less.

Kathy D. Miller, MD

Ballvé Lantero Professor of Oncology

However, Miller and Kaumaya acknowledge that it’s asking a lot of vaccines, which typically prevent disease, to halt aggressive cancer. Their longer-term goal is creating vaccines that are given when cancer is found early and focusing on checkpoint inhibitors, proteins used by cancer to cloak itself from immune cells. Kaumaya is already putting those peptides through rigorous lab testing, while Miller plans to draft a protocol for clinical testing.

“We’re also talking about microscopic disease,” Miller said. “The immune system still has a fighting chance to help eliminate it.”

Kaumaya’s ambition doesn’t stop there. He aspires to make a “vaccine platform” that would act like a socket wrench to different types of cancer. Chemists like him could swap out peptides to create different combinations, substantially speeding up the time it takes to fashion new therapies.

That potential for efficiency, adaptability and scalability appeals deeply to Salman. “What I love about this work is the platforms,” she said. “That’s what I want the Brown Center to be.”

Salman’s search for talent didn’t stop at Kaumaya. Leng Han, PhD, the David Brown Professor of Genomic Medicine, uses computational biology to parse terabytes of data in search of biomarkers, targets and therapeutic approaches. Lionel Apetoh, PhD, the Christopher Brown Professor of Immunology, brings expertise that can help improve the function of CAR T cells. And Yaoqi Alan Wang, PhD, explores why cancer might prove resistant to some forms of immunotherapy.

They covet targets that span multiple cancers and, as Kaumaya’s work shows, devise treatments that are “adaptable,” Salman said. That’s a marked shift from traditional classifications of cancer based on tissue type or the organ where it originates. “It doesn’t matter if the tumor is called solid or liquid,” Salman noted. “We can use the same strategy to treat both.”

Researchers are also investigating how natural killer cells, which destroy diseased and infected cells, may help thwart lung cancer. There’s potential for CAR T cells to be valuable tools in the treatment of colorectal cancer and glioblastoma.

Salman and Apetoh, for example, are exploring the potential of a protein expressed in acute myeloid leukemia and pancreatic cancer. They’ve even designed a vector, which helps CAR-T cells zero in on cancer cells and begun testing its performance in animal models. Eventually, the data they amass could be the backbone of an application to the FDA for a clinical trial.

“Chances are high it’s going to work,” Salman said.

KAUMAYA AND MILLER’S collaboration is a fleeting example.

Salman’s staffing assessment is blunt. The Brown Center is stocked with basic scientists, but IU faces a shortage of faculty skilled at smoothly managing clinical trials. That has the potential to create a bottleneck at the end of the Brown Center’s pipeline. The need is particularly acute in lung, pancreatic and colon cancers.

Spinning up more trials would maximize the infrastructure investment made by IU to build a cell and gene manufacturing facility. It made the first CAR T-cell therapy for a patient in October 2023, but the current tally is just 15 patients. Three years ago, Emily Hopewell, PhD, who oversees the facility, estimated that her staff could annually treat 70 patients.
“We’re not anywhere near that capacity,” she said this summer.

For her part, Salman has tried to fill the void, launching a trio of clinical trials with Rita Assi, MD, whom she recruited from Stony Brook University, for CAR T-cell therapies in rare forms of blood cancer. Yet those diseases feature small pools of patients — one of the cancers has just 1,000 new cases annually — who have also endured multiple rounds of treatments. Because their immune systems are already battered, a potential enrollee might not be eligible after a rigorous screening procedure featuring blood tests, imaging and other clinical procedures. Given that the trials are vetting safety, only one new patient can be treated each month.

The important thing in science is anticipation. What’s next? What should we do? It’s a constant conversation. There is no break.

Rita Assi, MD

Assistant Professor, Division of Hematology/Oncology

“Imagine the patient’s feelings through all of that,” said Assi, an assistant professor at the School of Medicine. “These trials mean they failed a lot of things and did not have much hope with other therapies. It’s scary for them.”

Even if Salman’s trials had a steady stream of eligible patients, they would still only bring in about three dozen people a year. Meanwhile, the cell and gene manufacturing facility also prepares doses only for Kaumaya’s vaccine trials, but those efforts are still in their early stages.

For IU, the value of that facility isn’t measured in revenue. It’s measured in grant dollars generated from exploratory data, in the ability to offer cutting-edge therapies and in keeping the cancer center on the leading edge nationally.

“We recognize we need each other,” Miller said. “How can we design trials that maximize information, move it forward and help patients? Without that, something like Pravin’s peptides will just stay in a lab. They won’t go anywhere.”

Huda Salman, MD, PhD, the director of of the Brown Center for Immunotherapy, at left, has quickly built a team of basic scientists to identify targets that span multiple cancers.

DESPITE THE HEADWINDS, the Brown Center is achieving what it set out to do.

Every week, the team assembles to discuss potential targets, pore over data and set priorities. It gets real-time feedback from faculty like Miller and Assi about how patients are faring and insights into whether treatments are panning out — feedback researchers ferry to their labs and use to refine experiments.

“Sometimes, we talk about it every day,” Assi said. “The important thing in science is anticipation. What’s next? What should we do? It’s a constant conversation. There is no break.”

Hopewell also has a seat at that table. As researchers discuss data, she and Vaughn, the facility manager, ask incisive questions. What kinds of experiments have been done? How will a therapy translate from an animal model to a human? How do they plan to scale up doses? Preparing to manufacture a new treatment can take at least six months and include at least three test runs.

“We’re looking at it from what data we need, and what we are eventually going to submit to the FDA,” Hopewell said.

Even with recent tumult, Salman said the center’s guiding objectives remain the same. Is it efficiently moving lab discoveries into the clinic? Are those therapies improving survival and remission rates?

From Lee’s seat, the early returns on Salman’s and Kaumaya’s work have been extraordinary.

“She’s been phenomenal,” he said. “She went from nothing to cutting-edge trials that are being done in patients and really fostered a national and international reputation. The growth (at the Brown Center) has been quite spectacular.”

To help accelerate lifesaving immunotherapy discoveries at the Brown Center for Immunotherapy, please contact Amber Kleopfer Senseny at akleopfe@iu.edu.

Tags: Cancer, Research Findings, Philanthropy, Precision Health