Jonathan Krog (GIFFORD & BIRNBAUM LABS)

Characterizing the Specificity Profile of a T cell Receptor

Targeted immunotherapies such as CAR T cell therapy and engineered TCR T cell therapy have made great advances in the treatment of a number of different cancers. However, reducing the cross-reactivity inherently expressed by T cell receptors has proven to be a limiting factor for TCR based therapies in the clinic. In this work, we aim to extensively characterize the specificity profile of a clinically relevant TCR and hypothesize that these data can be used to inform the design of a more precise peptide-MHC targeting TCR therapy.

Anisha Datta (LAUFFENBURGER LAB)

Investigating the Effect of AXL Inhibition on the Tumor Immune Microenvironment

AXL, a receptor tyrosine kinase implicated in cancer progression, is known to facilitate drug resistance via bypass signaling. AXL is a promising therapeutic target, with many studies focusing on how its inhibition affects cancer cells, but few groups have explored the effects of AXL inhibition on immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Here, we present our initial work toward building an in vitro model of cancer-immune cell interactions to gain a mechanistic understanding of AXL’s role in the TME and anti-tumor immunity.