UNC Lineberger’s Brian Miller, MD, PhD, is a 2024 recipient of a Melanoma Research Alliance Young Investigator Award. The three-year, $255,000 award will support his research focused on improving advanced melanoma’s response to immunotherapy.
His mentors for the award are Stergios Moschos, MD, associate professor, and Jenny Ting, PhD, William Rand Kenan Professor of Genetics, both at UNC School of Medicine, in close collaboration with Owen Fenton, PhD, assistant professor at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Miller will investigate approaches to target and deplete macrophages within melanoma tumors. Macrophages are a type of white blood cell and an essential component of the immune system. Studies have shown that macrophages can suppress the immune response against melanoma, causing resistance to immunotherapy.
Miller, assistant professor at UNC School of Medicine, and his colleagues have identified that a folate receptor uniquely found on immunosuppressive macrophages is critical to their survival. With the MRA grant, they will investigate the role of these macrophages in tumors and develop a new therapy targeting this folate receptor to improve the immune response against melanoma.
“We do not yet have effective therapies targeting immunosuppressive macrophages to treat melanoma. We hypothesize that inhibiting the metabolism of these macrophages may specifically deplete them from tumors, allowing our current immunotherapies to be more effective and minimizing toxicity,” Miller said.