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PLA2G2D: A new checkpoint lymph node macrophage

Tumor-draining lymph nodes (tdLNs) are critical sites for both antitumor immunity and tumor metastasis. To better understand what influences these events, Van Krimpen and Huang et al. performed spatial proteogenomics studies on...

Cancers modulate processing and presentation of p53 neoantigens to evade T cell detection

Haratani et al. found that most neoantigens arising from truncal mutations in TP53 were not presented, either because they arose from processing-resistant regions of p53 or because the required HLA al...

FasL-mediated death of activated intratumoral T cells drives secondary resistance to cancer immunotherapy

Qing and Ghorani et al. explored mechanisms of secondary resistance (2°R) to therapy (Treg depletion via anti-CD25 mAb + GM-CSF-expressing tumor cell vaccine) in B16 tumor- bearing mice. At 2°R, the T...

Reprogramming engineered autologous T cells to overcome resistance in patients with Merkel cell carcinoma

Asano, Veatch, and Sung et al. identified TCRMCC1, a high-avidity HLA-A*02:01-restricted TCR targeting Merkel cell polyomavirus large-T antigen and treated seven patients who had ICI-refractory metast...

γδ T cells modulate anti-tumor immunity in small cell lung cancer

Using scRNA sequencing, Ng et al. compared LN biopsy samples (non-affected vs. tumor-affected) from SCLC patients to study the antitumor role of MHC-I-independent pathways. Despite being PD-1+, γδ T c...

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Previous Digests

Affinity matters for novel IL-2 variant that synergizes with other immunotherapies

September 16, 2026

Antitumor IL-2 treatment comes with challenges regarding toxicity and unintended Treg activation. To overcome these challenges, various approaches to engineer IL-2 variants (IL-2var) have been developed. In a recent Science Advances publication, Vormehr et al. reported preclinical data on...

Breaking down the mechanism of enfortumab vedotin

September 9, 2026

Enfortumab vedotin (marketed under the brand name Padcev) is an approved antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) that targets Nectin-4 on cancer cells and delivers a payload of microtubule-disrupting monomethyl auristatin E (MMAE) to tumor cells. In recent work, Olson and Liu...

Aire-ing out a tumor’s dirty laundry: manipulating tumoral AIRE to boost antitumor immunity

September 2, 2026

The autoimmune regulator (AIRE) transcription factor in medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs) is essential for the negative selection of autoreactive T cells in the thymus by inducing expression of peripheral tissue-specific antigens. Chen, Pulido, et al. hypothesized that AIRE...

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