2025
October
CRATERs on the tumor cell surface are hubs for antitumor immunity
October 29, 2025
Cancer immunology studies are often performed using mouse models or tumor samples from patients, but these models do not provide ideal opportunities to study immune cells as they interact with endogenous tumors. To visualize tumor–immune interactions in situ, Ludin and Stirtz et al. generated transgenic zebrafish models and adapted a water flow system...
2025 marks a special milestone for ACIR
October 27, 2025
This year, 2025, marks a special milestone: ACIR’s 10th anniversary! And we celebrate it with the announcement of a leadership transition. Dear Readers, The idea for ACIR was born in early 2015, just a few months after my son Matt passed from metastatic melanoma. That profoundly heartbreaking experience fueled our mission to take...
Lipid formulation replacement reroutes mRNA to the spleen for improved immune activation
October 22, 2025
The spleen has gained interest as a vaccination target, as high uptake of therapeutic mRNA cancer vaccines by antigen-presenting cells (APCs) is needed for therapeutic efficacy. However, current formulations of mRNA vaccines contain lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) that accumulate in the liver. Further, polyethylene glycol-modified (PEGylated) lipids on LNPs can induce PEG immunogenicity with...
Immunotherapy efficacy in absence of antigen presentation? How CD4+ T cells mediate responses
October 15, 2025
The antitumor efficacy of cancer immunotherapy often relies heavily on CD8+ and CD4+ T cell recognition of tumor antigens presented on MHC molecules. However, investigating settings with low or no tumor MHC expression, Kim and Haerr et al. found that the combination of agonistic anti-CD40 and dual immune checkpoint blockade (ICB; anti-PD-1 +...
CRISPR screens to level up CAR-T therapy
October 8, 2025
One of the major questions in CAR T cell therapy research is how to improve CAR-T expansion, persistence, and functionality to improve clinical responses and prevent relapses. Two recent back-to-back publications in Nature used CRISPR screening methods to detect genetic targets for improving CAR-T therapy. In the first paper, Knudson, Escobar, Korrell, et...
CAR T cells take TROP2 targeting to the next level
October 1, 2025
TROP2 is a fetal oncogene that is expressed in a number of cancer types, and while it can be successfully targeted by antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs), cancer cells often develop ADC resistance, either through loss of expression of the targeted TROP2 epitope, or acquired resistance to the drug payload. In an effort to more...
