Our previous center, the CSBC Research Center for Cancer Systems Immunology at MSKCC brought the tools of systems biology to investigate cancer-immune system interactions at multiple stages of disease progression to answer central questions in cancer immunology and inform the design of novel immunotherapeutic interventions by pursuing the following overarching goals:

Cancer Initiation and Early Tumorigenesis

Investigators - Andrea Schietinger, Christina Leslie

Using new epigenomics technologies and innovative single-cell analyses with state-of-the-art systems biology approaches, we aimed to decipher the underlying molecular and epigenetic programs of dysfunctional tumor-specific T cell differentiation in early tumorigenesis.

Modeling Tumor Ecosystem Dynamics during Immunotherapy

Investigators - Alexander Rudensky, Joao Xavier

We performed quantitative analysis of cell types and cell states using functional, flow cytometric, population RNA-seq and droplet RNA sequencing together with ecological models of cancer, immune, and stromal cell populations to study the response of the tumor ecosystem to immunotherapeutic perturbations in established tumors.

Latent Disease and Metastasis

Investigators - Joan Massague, Joao Xavier

We examined the evolutionary dynamics of innate immune system control of metastatic disease, a new area of investigation in cancer immunology. We investigated the heterogeneity of latent cancer cells in their capacity for immune evasion, and used quantitative methods, including live cell imaging, to model latent tumor cell evasion of innate immune control and the dynamics of cycles of latent cell proliferation and potential editing by natural killer (NK) cells.