Metabolism of cytotoxic lymphocytes
Another focus of the group is to identify metabolic host factors that influence cancer treatment responses, as well as to understand and therapeutically modulate the tumor microenvironment by local approaches. Employing computational analyses of clinical routine data we could identify significant gender-specific metabolic effects on outcomes after chemo-immunotherapy. Moreover, we could demonstrate that local modulation of the tumor microenvironment, e.g. by radiotherapy, in addition to systemic cancer immunotherapy by the CTLA4 checkpoint inhibitor ipilimumab induced strong anti-tumor immune responses in melanoma patients, which resulted in doubled overall survival rates.