Dr. Catarina Pinto

Immunotherapy has brought significant improvements in the treatment of oncologic diseases, with durable responses observed for a subset of patients and indications. Nevertheless, there is a need to understand the limiting factors preventing broader responses. With this project, we plan to develop and implement human cell based preclinical assays to study the phenotype and heterogeneity of myeloid cells within the tumor microenvironment. These systems will be used to study the effect of antitumor compounds that target either immune cells or cancer cells, since increasing evidence suggests that eliciting an immune response against dying tumor cells is associated with improved disease outcome.