Christina V. Angeles, MD, FACS, FSSO is an Assistant Professor of Surgery and Dermatology and Faculty member of the Cancer Biology Graduate Program at the University of Michigan in the Division of Surgical Oncology. She is the Director of the Regional Therapies Cancer Clinic, Director of the Sarcoma Research Working Group and Co-Leader of the Cutaneous Oncology Research Interest Group at the Rogel Cancer Center. Dr. Angeles is board-certified in both General Surgery and Complex General Surgical Oncology. As a surgical oncologist, her clinical practice encompasses caring for patients with soft tissue cancers including sarcoma, GIST, melanoma, and non-melanoma cutaneous malignancies. Her laboratory is currently focusing on the immune microenvironment that drives melanoma and sarcoma in order to identify novel targets for immunotherapy development, specifically investigating the role of resident memory T cells in providing durable cancer immunity.

The Angeles lab is focusing on the mechanisms that underlie durable immune responses to immunotherapy, at the level of the type of cancer and individual patient. More specifically, we are investigating the role of resident memory T cells (TRM). Our publication in Nature Cancer 2021 highlights our exciting findings which shed light on the mechanism of durability. These studies revealed that cancer survivors can maintain durable memory as functional, broadly-distributed TRM in tissues and effector memory T cells (TEM) in circulation. We are now exploring the initial immune response in primary melanomas, both in human and and mouse, to determine the precursors to non-exhausted TRM. We use single cell RNA and TCR sequencing techniques to trace clonotypes over time. Using our newfound knowledge in melanoma, the lab is now investigating the immune biology of soft tissue sarcomas which has been slower than other cancers due to their rarity. Additionally, our lab is has developed a novel transgenic, immunocompetent spontaneous liposarcoma mouse model which produces tumors with similar pathway regulation as human liposarcoma. We are characterizing this model both on the molecular level (WES and RNA sequencing) and immune microenvironment (flow cytometry and scRNA/TCR seq) in parallel with human liposarcoma tissues. These models will ultimately lead to more precise, mechanism driven immunotherapy clinical trial design for both melanoma and sarcoma patients.