Timothy Bullock
Medical research is fraught with challenges, and melanoma poses an especially difficult set of questions. Researchers who work to better understand the disease and develop new treatments must be highly motivated. Some pursue cancer research because they have been touched by the disease themselves, and some are motivated by the intellectual challenge of the cancer puzzle. Exemplifying the latter, Dr. Timothy Bullock chose to pursue melanoma research because "it is a fascinating disease from the perspective of how the immune system interacts with it." Bullock is an Associate Professor in the Pathology Department at the University of Virginia (UVA) where his lab is part of the Human Immune Therapy Center.
Bullock grew up in the United Kingdom, and his interest in science was stimulated by his mother's work in the pharmaceutical industry. He fondly remembers summer holidays splitting time between working in the immunohistochemistry labs and harvesting brambles for the lab's pet stick insects. He studied Microbiology at Leeds University, went on to receive his Ph.D. from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and finally completing his post doctorate work at UVA.
Trained as an immunologist, Bullock is specifically interested in working out aspects of the relationship between melanoma and the immune system. "Melanoma is a challenge. The immune system appears to recognize melanoma since immune cells are present in it, yet the disease progresses," he says. Bullock is focused on figuring out why that happens with the goal of developing new treatment approaches to boost the immune system against cancer. Specifically, he focuses on how T cells, which are normally responsible for killing melanoma cells, are seemingly inactivated in patient tumors. With that knowledge, he hopes his lab can work on a vaccination approach to reactivate T cells to eradicate the disease in patients.
As an early career scientist in cancer research, Bullock received an MRA Young Investigator Award in 2008 as part of the first "class" of MRA Young Investigators. This support helped his lab optimize a therapeutic melanoma vaccination strategy designed to boost the T cell response to specific targets expressed by melanoma cells. In 2011, Bullock was awarded one of the first MRA Academic-Industry Partnership Awards, a grant that is designed to facilitate interactions between the academic and industrial research sectors. This project, which is being jointly supported by MRA and Celldex Therapeutics, focuses on determining whether an antibody that stimulates CD27 on immune cells will activate them against melanoma. These research studies are being conducted in the context of a phase I clinical trial.
Bullock says that MRA funding has been critical to the success of his career; not only through research funding but also through the many other opportunities that MRA creates for its funded investigators to enhance collaboration. "The MRA has provided my laboratory the opportunity to grow in scope, achievement, and outreach. MRA is a motivational organization that brings together the research community. At the end of each interaction we find ourselves highly invigorated to take on this very challenging disease," he says.
