An exploration of the role of the school secretary/administrator in the city of Dublin vocational education committee (CDVEC)

The objective of this study is to examine the role of the school secretary/administrator in CDVEC and to make recommendations that will improve the understanding of the role and performance for the benefit of all stakeholders. In completing the study the researcher consulted with stakeholder representatives as to their understanding of the importance of the role. CDVEC is the largest VEC in the Republic of Ireland. It delivers a broad range of educational courses and provides a wide variety of complementary and supplementary services. The focus of this study is on the school secretaries/administrators who work in the twenty- two schools and colleges. The conceptual framework in which the investigative component of the research was carried out was based on a critical theory approach. It focused on best practices in school administration and research carried out in New York and London which was included in the research analysis and served to enrich perspectives and findings. The study was completed in the context of huge change in education and education administration. Many of the legislative and curriculum changes that have taken place over the past decade has impacted heavily on the role and responsibility of the secretary/administrator. Very little research has been carried out on this subject in Ireland to date. As a result very little discussion and change has occurred on how secretaries/ administrators can be upskilled to help them with the many changes implemented and with many more to come. The research findings identified a range of key issues that if addressed would be of benefit to the students and other key stakeholders. Many aspects of the role are clarified and recommendations are made as to how it can support and influence future improvements in CDVEC education

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival