The Saenger Lab

The Saenger lab applies digital pathology including multi-plexed immuno-fluorescence, immuno-genomics, and spatial transcriptomics to study the tumor immune micro-environment with a focus on melanoma and liver cancer, two tumors that are very sensitive to immunotherapy.

Research

We apply multi-plexed immunohistochemistry and spatial transcriptomics to characterize the phenotype and spatial distributions of immune cells infiltrating human cancers. Ongoing projects include testing biomarkers on larger sample sets to validate whether the ratio of CD8 to CD68 cells correlates with risk of death in patients with early stage melanoma as well as development of the melanoma immune profile (MIP) an mRNA based signature characterizing immune surveillance in early stage disease. We also are working to characterize the tumor immune micro-environment in a diverse population of patients with liver cancer and have an interest in the role of complement in the pathogenesis of liver tumors.

19th Society Melanoma Research Congress

Society for Immunotherapy in Cancer 2022

Latest Publications

Neoadjuvant chemoradiation alters the immune microenvironment in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have a grim prognosis despite complete surgical resection and intense systemic therapies. While immunotherapies have been beneficial with many different types of solid tumors, they have almost uniformly failed in the treatment of PDAC. Understanding how therapies affect the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) can provide insights for the development of strategies to treat PDAC.