Computational oncology and personalized medicine Priority Research Area POB1

This time we are happy to welcome Bozena Kaminska, Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland, who will give a lecture entitled: "Tumor microenvironment under magnifying glass: challenges and new opportunities"

Tumor microenvironment (TME) consists of various stromal and immune cells that play an important role in tumor progression and responses to therapies. In malignant gliomas innate immune cells that accumulate in TME are reprogrammed, support tumor invasion and induce local and global immunosuppression. Previous studies failed to capture TME heterogeneity and functional phenotypes. Single-cell technologies allow precise identification of tumor composition at the single‑cell level, and high-resolution insights into the intratumoral heterogeneity and transcriptional activity of cells. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and cytometry by time-of-flight (CyTOF) are powerful techniques allowing quantification of whole transcriptomes or >30 protein targets in individual cells. Sc-omics studies verified many previous assumptions and provided strong evidence for the unexpected diversity of myeloid and lymphoid infiltrates in the glioma TME. The analysis of sc-omics data shows the functional diversity of immune infiltrates in malignant brain tumors with different genetic alterations and molecular subtypes. Sc-omics studies have identified cell subpopulations and signaling pathways that promote tumor progression, influence patient survival or make tumors vulnerable to immunotherapy. The results show that a precise definition of functional phenotypes of myeloid and lymphoid cells in TME might be essential for designing effective immunotherapies.

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