About the talk:

Cancers not only evade but actively corrupt the immune response tasked with eliminating them. Solid tumours deploy a range of mechanisms that alter the function, behaviour, and fate of cytotoxic effector lymphocytes, including CD8⁺ T cells and NK cells, thereby blunting their ability to kill cancer cells. Although immune checkpoint blockade has demonstrated the therapeutic potential of restoring intratumoural effector activity, durable responses remain restricted to a subset of patients and tumour types. Broadening and sustaining clinical benefit will require therapeutic strategies that target additional suppressive pathways alongside enhancement of T cell function. However, designing such rational combination therapies demands a detailed understanding of how the tumour and the local tissue environment reprogramme cells across the immune landscape.

Our research aims to define precisely how immune cells are reshaped within tumours, when these changes occur, and how they influence anti-tumour immunity. Using tumour implantation in photoconvertible mice, we have developed novel labelling strategies that distinguish newly infiltrating cells from those retained in the tissue. This approach enables direct tracking of immune cell fate, quantification of population turnover, and real-time analysis of how immune subsets adapt to the tumour microenvironment. Here I will discuss ongoing studies interrogating the emergence and regulation of myeloid populations within in vivo cancer models.

About the speaker:

Prof. David Withers studied for a PhD in Immunology at the Institute for Animal Health/University of Bristol (2000-2004), then post-doctoral studies first at the NIH, Bethesda, USA (NIAMS), then at the University of Birmingham, UK. In 2011, David was awarded a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development Fellowship investigating the role of innate lymphoid cells in regulating memory T cell responses and then a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2016. Most recently, his research has developed to consider the regulation of anti-tumour immunity, exploiting novel in vivo models and supported by Cancer Research UK, the Cancer Research Institute, Worldwide Cancer Research and the MRC. In June 2024, David moved his lab to the NDM Centre for Immuno-Oncology at the University of Oxford. As Professor of Experimental Cancer Immunology, he leads the Tumour-Immune Cell Dynamics Group, which is focused upon understanding how immune cells behave within, and respond to, the tumour microenvironment and then what this means for enhancing anti-tumour T cell responses. The lab is currently supported by a Wellcome Discovery Award and Cancer Research UK Programme grant.