Carrie Daniel-MacDougall
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Immunotherapy drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors release the brakes on the immune system so it can attack tumors. They have transformed treatment for melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, but only some patients respond for a long time, and many develop immune-related side effects.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Microbiology & Immunology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
melanoma
immune checkpoint inhibitors
immunotherapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- 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.
- Measure how PreFED alters gut, whole-body and anti-tumor immune responses during anti-PD1 treatment, alone or combined with LAG3 or CTLA4 blockade (other immune 'brake' proteins), and define its safety and efficacy.
- Transplant patients' stool from before and after the diet into germ-free mice to test whether the diet-shaped microbiome slows melanoma growth and improves the response to immunotherapy.
- Integrate human and mouse data to link diet-induced microbiome changes and microbe-derived metabolites to immune mechanisms such as inflammation balance and the function of tumor-killing effector T cells.
More about the research
The trillions of microbes living in the gut, known as the gut microbiome, appear to shape who responds. Diet strongly shapes these microbes. This raises a practical question: can a diet that patients can follow at home tip the gut ecosystem toward a better response to immunotherapy?
Why it matters
Many patients with melanoma do not benefit lastingly from immunotherapy or suffer immune-related side effects. A food-based diet that supports helpful gut microbes could become a low-cost, safe add-on to immunotherapy that works in many types of clinics and regions, which could help reduce gaps in care. The findings may also apply to other cancer types and stages. They could also show how a patient's diet affects other microbiome-based treatments now being developed.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ashish Ranjan
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Determine how well histotripsy plus anti-CD40 antibody microparticles works in mouse melanoma models that differ in immune visibility and tumor burden.
Minghua Tang
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine how meat-, dairy- and plant-based complementary diets affect infant growth from 5 to 12 months in a 300-infant randomized controlled feeding trial with longitudinal growth and body composition measures.
Bao Vuong
CUNY City College, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Describe the immune biology of skin side effects from immune checkpoint inhibitors using biological samples from an expanded cancer patient cohort.
The school
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: 23 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.