Stefani Spranger Explores the Absence of T Cells in Melanoma Subtypes

Stefani Spranger, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, discusses recent findings about why a subgroup of patients with melanoma do not have T cells within their tumor microenvironment.

At the 2016 Society for Melanoma Research (SMR) Congress, Spranger discussed her findings that upregulation of the WNT/beta-catenin pathway within the tumor cell mediates the exclusion of T cells from the microenvironment. This is because a subtype of dendritic cells (CD141-positive) must be present to recruit T cells back into the tumor.

So, even if doctors were to perform adoptive transfer with tumor-specific T cells that are ex-vivo activated, those T cells would not hone back into the tumor environment, according to Spranger.