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BACH2 orchestrates T cell differentiation and can be used to optimize cellular immunotherapies

Adoptive T cell transfer (ACT) and CAR-T treatment strategies are limited in their efficacy against solid tumors, as chronic antigen exposure induces exhaustion phenotypes, with reduced proliferation and effector function, limited persistence, and...

Lymph node colonization induces tissue remodeling via immunosuppressive fibroblast-myeloid cell niches supporting metastatic tolerance

Haist and Baertsch et al. studied the impact of tumor cell colonization of lymph nodes (LN) in patients with HNSCC and in a LN metastasis melanoma model. Primary tumors and paired LNs of node-positive...

Stepwise epigenetic signal integration drives adaptive programming of cytotoxic lymphocytes

Grassmann and Santosa et al. showed that temporal integration of antigen and inflammatory cytokine signals, not solely signal availability, determined lymphocyte fate. Antigen receptor engagement befo...

Scalable TCR synthesis and screening enable antigen reactivity mapping in vitiligo

Gaglione et al. developed TCRAFT, a pooled synthesis method to rapidly assemble large TCR libraries (>104) with high accuracy (>99%) and native ɑ/β chain pairing. Integration with RAPTR, a pMHC-...

Optimally engineered HLA/peptide-specific CAR-T cells outperform TCR-T cells to eradicate solid tumors

Decker et al. compared TCR-T (expressing true TCR) and CAR-T (expressing anti-pHLA Aab with CD28 or 4-1BB costimulation) targeting the same peptide antigen, MAGEA4. Compared to the TCR, the CARs were ...

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Previous Digests

Breaking bad macrophages through remodeling with armored CAR-T

January 28, 2026

CAR T cell efficacy is limited in solid tumors due to their highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME), which is partially and often significantly driven by tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs). Various therapies are in development to remodel the TME to improve...

Autocrine RA production feeds back on DC function

January 21, 2026

As professional antigen-presenting cells, dendritic cells have been utilized as whole-cell vaccines, but their clinical efficacy has thus far been limited. Fang et al. found that a common protocol of using GM-CSF and IL-4 to induce bone marrow cells...

DC cross-presentation of dead cell F-actin antigens sculpts tumor evolution

January 14, 2026

Type 1 conventional dendritic cells (cDC1s) cross-present tumor antigens to prime CD8+ T cells. DNGR-1 on cDC1s binds to F-actin of dead cells to allow for detection and internalization of necrotic debris, and signaling results in MHC-I processing and...

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