Keith L. Knutson, PhD

Keith L. Knutson, PhD

Titles and Affiliations

Andrew A. and Mary S. Sugg Professor in Cancer Biology
Professor of Immunology
Director, Mayo Clinic Florida Cytometry and Cell Imaging Laboratory
Professor of Immunology in College of Medicine, Department of Immunology
Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL

Areas of Focus

Treatment

Research Area

Designing vaccines with the potential to enhance immunity against treatment resistant cells in order to prevent breast cancer recurrence and metastasis.

Impact

The power of a patient’s immune system to recognize and fight breast cancer has been supported by studies that showed an association between high levels of natural immunity and better therapy response and longer survival. These findings led investigators to hypothesize that vaccination to boost a person’s immunity may impact breast cancer outcomes. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Knutson’s group has been leveraging vaccine technology in an effort to provide durable immunity that can prevent disease progression. Despite some advances, the vaccines tested so far are only useful in a small fraction of breast cancer patients due to a combination of factors such as low expression of the vaccine targeted antigens (i.e., proteins) among breast cancers or the inability of early vaccines to produce a robust immunogenic response. Pioneering discoveries by Dr. Knutson and many others have identified specific cells that play a role in disease progression and recurrence, breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs). These cells are aggressive and resistant to chemotherapy and other treatments and together they form the seeds for cancer recurrence. Dr. Knutson’s project seeks to identify potential tumor antigens that are shared between BCSCs and CAFs and to develop a vaccine strategy to promote immunity against them. Ultimately, he hopes to leverage his expertise in clinical trials to translate this work into the clinic across the spectrum of breast cancer subtypes.

What’s Next

New methods to isolate BCSCs and CAFs have been developed and it is now possible to analyze them via high-definition sequencing and bioinformatic strategies to identify new vaccine antigens/targets. Dr. Knutson’s team and others have discovered powerful novel strategies that they will use to produce vaccines against the identified BCSS and CAF target proteins. They hope to deploy their vaccines to rapidly boost immunity prior to and during neoadjuvant therapy to increase the breast cancer response and promote improved survival outcomes.

Biography

Keith L. Knutson, Ph.D., is a consultant in the Department of Immunology, Mayo Clinic in Florida, with joint appointments in the Department of Cancer Biology and Department of Molecular Medicine. He serves as the Director of the Mayo Clinic in Florida Cell Analysis and Imaging Shared Resource. He is also Co-director of the Mayo Clinic Enterprise Cancer Center’s Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program and Vice Chair of the Mayo Clinic Enterprise Research Personnel Committee. Dr. Knutson joined the staff of Mayo Clinic in 2005 and holds the academic rank of Professor of Immunology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science as well as the distinction as the Andrew A. and Mary S. Sugg Professor of Cancer Research. Dr. Knutson earned his Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of Georgia and completed two postdoctoral fellowships in immunology, one at the University of British Columbia and the other at the University of Washington.

Dr. Knutson is a leader in the field of cancer immunology with research that focuses on the immunology and immunotherapy of prevalent women’s cancers, namely breast, ovarian, and lung cancers. His contributions to science include clinical development and testing of tumor antigen-specific vaccines in patients with breast and ovarian cancers. He currently has six FDA-approved vaccine trials underway and is principal investigator of several projects testing vaccines for breast and ovarian cancer.

Dr. Knutson has authored numerous journal articles, consistently publishing in high-impact scientific journals. In recognition of his work, he has received many awards and honors, including the Young Investigator Award-Pharmingen, conferred by the American Association for Cancer Research, and the prestigious Howard Temin Award, conferred by the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. He is also the 2017 Investigator of the Year at the Mayo Clinic campus in Florida and recently elected as a Komen Scholar for the second time.

In addition to his research activities, Dr. Knutson is active in education and has mentored postdoctoral fellows, research associates, and medical students among others. Dr. Knutson’s has several current and past memberships with professional organizations which include the Breast Cancer Research Program and the Ovarian Cancer Research Program of the United States Department of Defense, the Tumor Microenvironment Study Section of the U.S. National Institutes of Health Center for Scientific Review, and the Education and Training Committee for the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer. He is the principal investigator of the Artemis Project, National Breast Cancer Coalition, where he is working to produce prevention vaccines for breast cancer.