What if a patient’s own immune system could be trained to recognize and attack cancer?
That question is helping drive new approaches to cancer treatment, including the development of individualized cancer vaccines. At the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Matthew Berry studies novel cancer therapies in dogs and cats with the goal of improving treatment for companion animals while also contributing to discoveries that may advance cancer care more broadly.
Master of Veterinary Science student Allison Koesler joined Dr. Berry’s research to work on an important piece of that challenge: developing a more consistent way to generate canine immune cells that could ultimately be used in cancer immunotherapy research.
Her focus was on the dendritic cell—a powerful immune cell that helps the body recognize threats and activate an immune response.
Meet the Research Team
Faculty Investigator: Dr. Matthew Berry
Title: Assistant Professor
Department: Veterinary Clinical Medicine
Research Focus: Cancer therapies, comparative oncology, vaccine development and veterinary oncology
Graduate Scholars: Allison Koesler
Degree Program: Master of Veterinary Science
Capstone Research: Phenotypic Variability of Canine Monocyte-Derived Dendritic Cells from Generation Methodology
Research Mission
As a clinician-scientist, Dr. Berry studies cancer in companion animals to investigate and translate new treatment strategies.
Dogs and cats naturally develop cancer, providing opportunities to study cancer biology and treatment in veterinary patients. This comparative oncology approach can help researchers investigate promising therapies while working toward better treatment options for companion animals.
One area of interest is harnessing the immune system to fight cancer.
Dendritic cells play an important role because they connect the innate and adaptive immune systems. They can recognize and present antigens—including tumor-associated material—to T cells, helping initiate an immune response.
That ability has made dendritic cells particularly interesting for the development of individualized cancer vaccines.
But before researchers can reliably use canine dendritic cells in future studies, there is a fundamental problem to solve:
There is no standardized method for generating them.
Allison’s Contribution
Researchers can generate monocyte-derived dendritic cells, or moDCs, in the laboratory, but differences in culture methods can produce cells with different characteristics.
That variability makes research harder to reproduce and can make it difficult to determine whether differences observed in an experiment are caused by the treatment being studied—or simply by the way the cells were generated.
Allison worked to help define and validate a more standardized system for producing canine moDCs.
She compared eight different culture conditions that varied three primary factors:
- the type of base media,
- whether serum was present, and
- the concentrations of the cytokines GM-CSF and IL-4.
After the cells were generated, the research team used spectral flow cytometry to examine several markers associated with dendritic cell activation, including CD80/86, CD40, CCR7, and MHC II.
The project also incorporated RNA sequencing to characterize the cells’ transcriptional profiles, identify important functional genes, and examine their similarity to human monocyte-derived dendritic cells.
What Did the Research Show?
One factor emerged as particularly important: serum.
Allison’s analysis indicated that whether serum was included in the culture environment had a greater effect on the expression of activation markers than differences in cytokine concentrations.
That may sound like a small laboratory detail, but standardization matters.
If researchers generate dendritic cells differently from one experiment to another, it becomes harder to reproduce results and determine whether a potential cancer therapy is actually responsible for the biological changes they observe.
Understanding which culture conditions produce consistent cells provides a stronger foundation for the experiments that follow.
Additional studies will be needed to confirm the functionality of the dendritic cells produced under each condition.
Why This Research Matters
Developing a new cancer therapy rarely begins with the therapy itself.
It begins with building reliable systems that allow researchers to test ideas accurately.
For dendritic-cell-based cancer vaccines, that means first understanding how to consistently generate the immune cells researchers hope to use.
Dendritic cells are capable of presenting tumor antigens to cytotoxic T cells, making them promising candidates for individualized cancer vaccines designed to generate an immune response against cancer.
Creating a standardized canine dendritic cell model could therefore support future research into new immunotherapies for dogs with cancer.
It also fits into the larger promise of comparative oncology. By studying naturally occurring cancers in companion animals, researchers can investigate therapies that may improve veterinary cancer care while also contributing to our broader understanding of cancer biology and treatment.
For Dr. Berry’s research program, Allison’s work helps build some of the foundational science needed to move those discoveries forward.
Graduate Experience
For Allison, the project also changed how she imagined her own future in veterinary medicine.
Her previous experience in cell biology gave her a foundation for understanding the science, but the capstone allowed her to connect concepts she had studied in the classroom with an active veterinary cancer research program.
She initially approached the experience with some hesitation.
As the project progressed, that uncertainty was replaced by greater confidence in her ability to contribute to research—and curiosity about where that experience might lead.
Allison had previously envisioned a career focused primarily on general clinical practice. Her experience in Dr. Berry’s research introduced another possibility: specialization and research could also become part of her future in veterinary medicine.
More importantly, the experience gave her confidence to approach veterinary school with a greater willingness to explore opportunities outside the path she had originally imagined.
Her capstone illustrates another side of research in action. Sometimes advancing cancer treatment means testing a new therapy. Other times, it means building the reliable scientific foundation that makes the next discovery possible.
Beyond the Classroom
Stories of learning, discovery, and impact from the Master of Veterinary Science.