Martin Cannon, PhD

Research Program: Cancer Biology Faculty Rank: Professor Campus: University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College: College of Medicine Department: Microbiology & Immunology Faculty

Cancer Research Interest

• Disease Site Focus: Gynecology
• Research Focus Area: Treatment
• Type of Research: Clinical
• Research Interest Statement: Our laboratory at UAMS has a strong translational focus, with the goal of developing new treatments based on dendritic cell (DC) vaccination for gynecological malignancies. Recent clinical observations have shown that Th17 infiltration is associated with markedly improved overall survival. In partnership with the Mayo Clinic, we have recently completed a Phase I clinical trial of FR-targeted Th17-inducing DC vaccination in stage IIIC/IV ovarian cancer patients following surgery and chemotherapy. Th17-inducing DC vaccination induces consistent Th1/Th17 responses and antibody responses, and incurs minimal toxicity. Of 18 evaluable patients, 39% remain recurrence-free beyond 4 years post-enrollment. Although the clinical results are encouraging, one of the major barriers to clinical success of immunotherapy resides with immune suppression in the tumor microenvironment. Our current research explores the hypothesis that inhibition of homologous recombination and/or the replication stress response triggers an inflammatory response in the ovarian tumor microenvironment and alleviates myeloid cell-associated immune suppression, thereby boosting therapeutic responses to Th17-DC vaccination. Recent studies have shown that PARP inhibitors can activate innate and adaptive immune responses in ovarian cancer through the cGAS-STING pathway, thus providing a link between DNA damage, inflammatory responses and antitumor immunity. We have further shown that STING activation can reverse myeloid cell immune suppression of ovarian tumor antigen-specific T cell responses. These observations present a compelling case for the combination of PARP inhibitors and Th17-DC vaccination.

Contact Information

• Email Address: CANNONMARTIN@UAMS.EDU
• Profiles Research Networking Software: View Profile

Active Grants

• US Department of Defense – HT94252411008
  “Mechanisms of Combinatorial Therapy to Enhance Anti-PD-1 Immune Checkpoint Inhibition for Ovarian Cancer”
  Principal Investigator
  11/15/2024 – 11/14/2027
• NIH/Nat. Cancer Institute – 1R21CA288928
  “Mechanisms of Th17-DC immunotherapy for ovarian cancer”
  Principal Investigator
  3/7/2024 – 2/28/2026
• Arkansas Breast Cancer Research Program – AWD00055470
  “FY23- ABCRP Dr. Cannon.”
  Principal Investigator
  9/1/2022 – 8/31/2025
• NIH/Nat. Inst. of Allergy & Infectious Diseases – 1U01AI170039
  “Platelets in radiation-induced immune dysregulation”
  Principal Investigator
  7/25/2022 – 5/31/2027
• NIH/Nat. Cancer Institute – 1R01CA245083
  “Improvement of cellular immunotherapy during dysbiosis”
  Co-Investigator
  9/15/2021 – 8/31/2026

Recent Publications

• Tesfay MZ, Zhang Y, Ferdous KU, [et al., including Cannon MJ]. Enhancing immune response and survival in hepatocellular carcinoma with novel oncolytic Jurona virus and immune checkpoint blockade. Molecular therapy. Oncology. 2024 32(4):200913. PMID: 39758249. PMCID: PMC11697550.
• Ferdous KU, Tesfay MZ, Cios A, [et al., including Cannon MJ]. Enhancing Neoadjuvant Virotherapy's Effectiveness by Targeting Stroma to Improve Resectability in Pancreatic Cancer. Biomedicines. 2024 12(7). PMID: 39062169. PMCID: PMC11275208.
• Luo Y, Shreeder B, Jenkins JW, [et al., including Cannon MJ]. Th17-inducing dendritic cell vaccines stimulate effective CD4 T cell-dependent antitumor immunity in ovarian cancer that overcomes resistance to immune checkpoint blockade. Journal for immunotherapy of cancer. 2023 11(11). PMID: 37918918. PMCID: PMC10626769.
• Nagalo BM, Zhou Y, Loeuillard EJ, [et al., including Cannon MJ]. Characterization of Morreton virus as an oncolytic virotherapy platform for liver cancers. Hepatology (Baltimore, Md.). 2022. PMID: 36052732.
• Conrad SJ, Raza T, Peterson EA, [et al., including Cannon M]. Myxoma virus lacking the host range determinant M062 stimulates cGAS-dependent type 1 interferon response and unique transcriptomic changes in human monocytes/macrophages. PLoS pathogens. 2022 18(9):e1010316. PMID: 36103568. PMCID: PMC9473615.
• Zhang Y, Gabere M, Taylor MA, [et al., including Cannon MJ]. Repurposing live attenuated trivalent MMR vaccine as cost-effective cancer immunotherapy. Frontiers in oncology. 2022 12:1042250. PMID: 36457491. PMCID: PMC9706410.
• Block MS, Dietz AB, Gustafson MP, [et al., including Cannon MJ]. Th17-inducing autologous dendritic cell vaccination promotes antigen-specific cellular and humoral immunity in ovarian cancer patients. Nature communications. 2020 11(1):5173. PMID: 33057068. PMCID: PMC7560895.