Aaron M. Ring, M.D., Ph.D.

Research

The overarching goal of our research is to learn how to control the activity of the immune system to better fight cancer. In the past several years, new treatments that direct patients’ immune cells to attack tumors have set a new paradigm in cancer therapy. However, less is known about the body’s own natural antibody response to tumors and how the presence of these antibodies may affect patients’ responses to therapy. The Ring lab has recently developed methods that repurpose protein engineering technologies to characterize antibodies that are made by patients in response to cancer therapy. This will allow us to see how these antibodies affect patients’ likelihood of an anti-tumor response or their potential for immune toxicities. Importantly, the technology is highly scalable, so we can study antibody responses for hundreds of diverse cancer patients treated with immunotherapy. These studies could provide insight into how the body’s antibody response to immunotherapy can affect patient outcomes and could uncover novel pathways for antitumor treatment.