Immunotherapeutic interventions are providing substantial therapeutic benefit for many cancer patients. However, immunotherapies frequently unleash an immune attack against not only tumors but also healthy tissues. An enduring challenge in the field is to improve the therapeutic index of these agents. To this end, this work explores collagen anchoring of immunotherapeutic agents to the tumor extracellular matrix as a potential strategy for localizing their immunomodulatory effects to the tumor.

For many cancers, DNA-damaging agents are front-line therapy. Unfortunately, most patients will develop chemoresistance during their treatment. Recently, post-transcriptional regulation of mRNAs, controlled by RNA-binding proteins, has been increasingly recognized as playing a critical role in this chemoresistance. In this project, we aim to identify stress response-regulating RNA-binding proteins and their target mRNAs. This work can be used to inform optimal target and DNA-damaging agent combinations to enhance tumor response.