Ashish Ranjan
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Immune checkpoint inhibitors, drugs that release the brakes on the immune system, have transformed treatment of advanced melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer. Yet many patients barely respond, especially those with immunologically "cold" tumors that the immune system largely ignores.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Microbiology & Immunology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
melanoma
cancer immunotherapy
immune checkpoint inhibitors
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2028
What they work on
- Determine how well histotripsy plus anti-CD40 antibody microparticles works in mouse melanoma models that differ in immune visibility and tumor burden.
- Uncover how the histotripsy and anti-CD40 microparticle combination reverses resistance to checkpoint inhibitors and causes untreated distant tumors to shrink (the abscopal effect).
- Translate the histotripsy and anti-CD40 microparticle therapy to clinical trials in pet dogs with naturally occurring malignant melanoma, which resembles the human disease.
- Compare how calreticulin nanoparticles plus focused ultrasound control tumors and alter immune signaling in lean versus obese mice with B16F10 melanoma.
- Test calreticulin nanoparticle and focused ultrasound treatments together with immune checkpoint inhibitors in lean and obese mice with YUMM1.7 melanoma.
More about the research
Even patients who respond often relapse. Ranjan's grants combine focused ultrasound, which uses sound waves aimed at a tumor from outside the body, with particles injected into the tumor. The goal is to turn cold tumors "hot" so the immune system attacks both treated tumors and untreated tumors elsewhere in the body.
Why it matters
Many patients with advanced metastatic melanoma do not benefit from current immunotherapies or relapse after treatment. Combining focused ultrasound with immune-activating particles could make these resistant tumors respond, including tumors that were never directly treated. Testing in obese mice and in pet dogs with melanoma may help guide human trials. The approach could also extend to other solid tumors such as breast and prostate cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Carrie Daniel-MacDougall
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether a prebiotic food-enriched diet (PreFED), delivered as prebiotic foods plus nutrition counseling, changes the gut microbiome and blood metabolites of metastatic melanoma patients receiving checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy.
Nicole Steinmetz
University of California-San Diego, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Determine how cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) trains innate immune cells, by stimulating cells in culture and challenging them with bacterial LPS while using ChIP and ATAC sequencing to detect epigenetic rewiring and metabolic change.
Seth Pollack
Northwestern University, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine a safe and effective dose of B10G5, an antibody that neutralizes the tumor-shed immune-suppressing protein MIC, and test whether it activates NK cells within canine soft tissue sarcomas.
The school
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: 40 labs on PI Pages, $869M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
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