Principal Investigator Stefani Spranger
Project Website http://spranger-lab.mit.edu/
The goal of the Spranger Lab is to understand how a range of tumor cell-intrinsic, tissue-specific and environmental factors directly impact the interaction between the cancer and the immune system.
Cancer immunotherapies, first and foremost checkpoint blockade therapy (anti-CTLA4 and anti-PD-1/PD-L1), have revolutionized cancer treatment. Despite these advances only a fraction of cancer patients responds to immunotherapeutic interventions. Even for cancer types that typically show high response rates, only a fraction of patients respond. We aim to understand which tumor cell-intrinsic, tissue-macroenvironmental and environmental factors mediate resistance mechanisms against immunotherapy by affecting T cell infiltration into tumors.