Project title: Multidimensional immune profiling of advanced pancreatic NETs

General Description

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs), are rare morphologically well-differentiated malignancies with an unacceptably poor 5-year survival rate of 20%. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that immunosuppressive Tregs play a critical role in preventing host clearance of these tumors, including the observation that Tregs are present in pNETs and portend worse survival, and clear clinical benefit from therapies depleting Tregs. In this work, we aim to characterize the immune environment including both immune cells and their targetable immunomodulatory receptors, as well as coexistent genomic and copy number alterations in a heavily clinical and molecularly annotated population of specimens from patients with metastatic NETs. Upon completion of this work we will have information regarding potential therapeutic targets and the relationship between these targets and underlying genomic alterations.