Chrystal Paulos

Chrystal Paulos, PhD - V Foundation Melanoma is a serious and often deadly type of skin cancer. Although immunotherapy has saved many lives, it still doesn’t work for every patient. Our lab is developing ways to give the immune system a...

www.v.org/grants/chrys...
Honored to be awarded the All-Star V Foundation grant! Inspired by great team efforts between #Paulos and #Lesinski labs! Props to cell therapy gurus @megen-w.bsky.social #AnnaCole @meganmw.bsky.social and crew @winshipcancer.emory.edu

9/ 🙌 Huge thanks to our awesome team: Anna Cole (1st author), Hannah Knochelmann (co-1st), Megan Wyatt, @megen-w.bsky.social Megen Wittling, Natalie Horvat, Aubrey Smith, Guillermo Rangel Rivera, Sound Kumaresan, Pawel Muranski, Ayana Ruffin, Jeremy Boss, & MPI Greg Lesinski. #CancerImmunotherapy

8/💡From cells to cures: @meganmw.bsky.social Megan Wyatt in our lab is developing a TIL-based therapy leveraging Th17 cells for checkpoint-refractory tumors.
Stay tuned @winshipcancer.emory.edu. Thanks to collaborations w/@lesinskilab.bsky.social and support @thevfoundation.bsky.social, NCI $ more!

7/ 🧠Why does this matter? Because T cell therapies often ignore B cells. Our data say: stop doing that.
CD4+ Th17 cells provide the help B cells need to generate potent antitumor antibodies. It’s a team sport.

6/ 🔬IL-21 production by Th17 cells is essential. Block the IL-21 receptor and the B cell response crashes (Fig 7).
Reduced germinal centers. Less plasma cells. No sustained immunity. IL-21 is the handshake between these two arms.

5/ 🧠Here’s the kicker: If we transfer serum from cured mice into naive mice, they resist metastatic challenge. Passive transfer of protection. See the lungs in Fig 8F + quant in 8G. The antibodies *work*.

4/ 🧪Mice cured with Th17 therapy have tons of class-switched, tumor-binding antibodies in serum (IgG1, IgG2a, IgG2b). Shown in Fig 8A-C. Not just any antibody — it’s tumor-specific and persistent.

3/ 💥 Depleting B cells with αCD20 or using muMT mice abolishes the effect of Th17 therapy. Survival plummets. B cells aren’t passengers here — they’re co-drivers of durable immunity.

2/ 🐭Want to keep tumors away for good?
Check out this weeks @cp-cancercell.bsky.social
You’ll need both T cells *and* B cells.
Th17 therapy fails in mice genetically deficient in B cells or in mice antibody depleted of B cells.
Bottom line:No host T/B cells, no cure!
See survival curves (Fig 3).

Adoptively transferred Th17 cells cooperate with host B cells to achieve durable tumor immunity Cole et al. report that adoptively transferred, tumor-specific Th17 cells engage host B cells and drive B cell proliferation and differentiation. These Th17 cells require B cells for sustained immunit...

🧵1/ New in @Cancer_Cell: Our lab discovered that Th17 cells must team up with B cells to eliminate tumors, and prevent it from coming back.
🔗 Read: www.cell.com/cancer-cell/...
🧬This unexpected immune duo sparks tumor immunity.
🖼️Image: See schematic Th17/B cell antitumor action!

Tumor site influences efficacy of MEKi and immunotherapy combinations in pre-clinical model of cholangiocarcinoma - PubMed These findings identify myeloid cells as key mediators of both immunotherapy resistance and toxicity in CCA, highlighting the critical importance of tumor site and use of physiologically relevant pre-...

Check out our new paper in Hepatology on how myeloid cells limit immunotherapy in preclinical cholangiocarcinoma models!
Disease site matters! @chrystalpaulos.bsky.social @megen-w.bsky.social @winshipcancer.emory.edu many others!

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40590857/

Amazing talk by Dr. Ayana Ruffin @winship on the importance of CD2 in adoptive immunotherapy of cancer. It’s a T:B thing. #2025SIS on the UVA campus.

Not a trend I will partake in. :/

This week I will be attending the @helloeacr.bsky.social conference, entitled "Defense is the Best Attack," where we'll catch up on the latest advances in immuno-oncology and advanced therapies. It's always a great opportunity to meet people and learn from the best. Hoping to meet you all there! 😁🧪

Excited to present at the first Breast Center Translational Research Seminar Series @winshipcancer.emory.edu Thank Dr. Shipra Gandhi for the invite.

A systematic approach to analyze T cell migration: application to mouse melanoma tumors T cells must assess and choose between surveilling large areas, but also engage efficiently with the target cells. This process is translated into variations in speed and turning angle of T cells. In ...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

An Aged Microenvironment Increases CAR T Cell Cytotoxicity but Impairs Therapeutic Efficacy Background Cancer disproportionately affects the elderly, who are often less able to tolerate traditional cytotoxic therapies, and may benefit from T cell–based immunotherapies. However, studies evalu...

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Response-Adaptive Surgical Timing in Neoadjuvant Immunotherapy Demonstrates Enhanced Pathologic Treatment Response in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma - PubMed Response-adaptive surgical timing enhanced treatment response. IDOi BMS986205 augmented pTR in patients with high IDO1 expression in baseline samples, indicating a need for identifying and targeting r...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39585339/

What is the most important unanswered questions to address in the field of cancer immunotherapy?

Delighted to present our labs exciting work on T cell metabolism and cancer immunotherapy today at AACR by Guillermo Rangel Rivera and Soundharya Kumaresan!

Neoantigens drive adoptively transferred CD8 T cells to long-lived effectors mediated by lymph node trafficking Adoptive transfer of neoantigen-reactive T lymphocytes mediates potent responses against solid tumors in patients while often limiting toxicity to normal tissues; however, the mechanisms governing the...

Our findings highlight the critical role of T cell trafficking to the lymph nodes in shaping neoantigen-specific antitumor responses and offers insight for improving adoptive cellular therapies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Check out this awesome body of elegant work by @lesinskilab.bsky.social @winshipatemory.bsky.social on the immune landscape of primary vs metastatic tumor of patients with pancreatic cancer. Must read!!!!

Stellar team!!

Inspiring (as always) @cholangiocarcinoma.bsky.social annual meeting comes to a close. Our @winshipatemory.bsky.social team returns motivated by survivors, patients and caregivers to make a difference! @megen-w.bsky.social @chrystalpaulos.bsky.social

Excited to present our labs work on novel T cell therapies @clevelandclinic.bsky.social virtually @winshipatemory.bsky.social Thank you for the invite #LilyWang!

💥Cheers to Megen Wittling @megen-w.bsky.social @winshipatemory.bsky.social for presenting exciting work on the distinct trafficking & activation patterns of adoptively transferred CD8 T cells that recognize non-mutated va mutated tumors.

Going to talk about antitumorT cell prowess at KUMC today. Thanks to Dr. Kalyani Pyaram for inviting me to visit and talk about our labs work @winshipatemory.bsky.social

This is figure 7, which shows that 5TIF4 cells provide long-term protection against HDM-induced asthma recurrence.

A study in Nature Immunology finds that a single injection of CAR T cells, designed to target drivers of allergic reactions, represses the signs and symptoms of allergic asthma in mice for at least a year. go.nature.com/3VeWuVg 🧪

New CAR-T Cell Therapy Shows Promise for Hard-to-Treat Cancers New CAR-T Cell Therapy Shows Promise for Hard-to-Treat Cancers

#CUAnschutz researchers have developed a supercharged iteration of CAR-T cell therapy that can enhance the effectiveness and longevity of the cells, particularly against #cancer cells that are harder for prior CAR-T therapies to detect and fight. 🗞️⬇️

From 2010 to 2016 (latest data I have ), NIH research contributed to EVERY drug approved by the FDA