Ahmet Coskun, PhD

Lung cancer is the primary cause of cancer death in the U.S. and current chemotherapies fail in the majority of patients. Recent advances in immunotherapies show great promise in lung cancers. Subsets of immune T cells show a strong correlation to the cancer prognosis and survival rates of certain cancer patients. But how these cells work in lung cancer is still unknown. We will provide a molecular imaging technology to simultaneously visualize multiple molecular subtypes to decipher how immune cells specialize in response to cancer cells in a lung cancer modal on a dish. Modeling chemical distributions of immune cells near cancer cells will reveal the immune capacity for the elimination of cancer cells. This research will shed light on the future immunotherapeutic drug designs to achieve higher response rates to immunotherapies for lung cancer patients.