Mauro di Pilato
Assistant Professor
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Department of Immunology
In cancer immunotherapy, many studies focus on the induction and activation of effector CD8 T cells as suitable strategies to reject tumors. Dendritic cells (DC) and neutrophils (Neu) also participate in the control of tumor progression by cross-talking with T cells, while regulatory T (Treg) cells play a major role in dampening CD8 T cell activity and promote tumor growth.
Poorly T cell infiltrated melanomas remain a big challenge in cancer immunotherapy. Indeed, those patients do not respond to the current treatments in clinical trials. Recently, many studies focus on mouse Treg instability and their gain of effector activity as an alternative immunotherapy approach to cure cancer.
What is needed for unstable Treg to accumulate in the tumor microenvironment is still unknown. Thus, it is important to define which DC and Neu subsets are required for Treg to expand on tumors. It is currently not known whether unstable Treg accumulate within specific intratumoral niches and which immune signals of intratumoral accumulation they do receive in those areas.
因此，我们要研究并表征哪些免疫信号与不稳定的Treg的肿瘤内浸润有关。具体而言，我们要专注于涉及Treg肿瘤内不稳定，增殖和生存的途径，并定义Treg积累的新策略。我们的目标是开发新方法，以提高癌症免疫疗法的有效性以及将对免疫检查点阻断抑制剂做出反应的癌症患者的数量，最后防止原发性黑色素瘤的进展。
NCBI Bibliography
MDACC Faculty
教育和培训
PhD, Autonomous University of Madrid, 2015