University of Illinois Cancer Center member Steve Seung-Young Lee, PhD, is the recipient of a two-year $387,000 National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant for a project that aims to develop a novel spatial proteomics method for accurately assessing the functions of various immune cell types based on their locations in the tumor microenvironment.
The spatial and functional heterogeneity of immune cells within a tumor is a major obstacle in understanding and treating cancer. Two Cancer Center pilot funding awards helped him to produce preliminary data for the new NCI R21 award, “Tumor Subregion and Immune Cell Type-Selective Proteomic Profiling.”
Lee is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Retzky College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).
In the public health relevance statement for the award, he explained: “With the successful completion of this project, we will have established a powerful tool that dramatically improves the depth and breadth of our knowledge on the roles of immune cells in tumors, thereby contributing to the development of highly effective strategies for cancer immunotherapy.”