Jena French, PhD

Research Interests for Patients

-Tumor Immunology and Immuno-oncology -Thyroid Cancer My current research focuses on defining the role of the immune response in advanced thyroid cancers. Using archival and fresh surgical samples. I was the first to characterize PD-1+ T cells and T cell exhaustion in differentiated thyroid cancers. In the past few years, I have published my key data describing partial T exhaustion in regional lymph node metastases (Severson et al., CIR 2015) and the immune response in invasive and distant metastatic disease (Bastman et al., JCEM 2016). These studies led to our current clinical trial investigating the efficacy of pembrolizumab (anti-PD-1; Merck) in combination with lenvatinib (TKI, VEGFR inhibitor; Eisai) in patients with radioiodine resistant, locally invasive and/or metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer (Opened April 2018; P.I. Dr. Bryan Haugen). Correlative research studies are underway to identify biomarkers of response and resistance to treatment. In parallel, we are investigating this and other novel combination therapies in a mouse model of advanced thyroid cancer. These studies are applicable across cancer types where patients fail to generate a durable response to antiangiogenic and checkpoint inhibitor combination approaches.