Thomas Tüting

Thomas Tüting, MD, is Professor and Chairman of Dermatology at the University Hospital Magdeburg. He received his clinical training in dermatology at the University Hospital Mainz and subsequently his research training in experimental tumor immunology at the University of Pittsburgh. In his former position as Associate Professor of Experimental Dermatology and Head of Dermato-Oncology at the University Hospital Bonn, Thomas Tüting pioneered the establishment of novel genetic mouse model systems that combine experimental tools of tumor biology and tumor immunology to study the dynamics of tumor-immune cell interactions during disease progression and in response to therapeutic intervention. His group discovered that neutrophilic inflammatory responses in the skin induced by sun burning doses of UVB irradiation promote melanoma cell migration and metastatic dissemination. Therapeutic activation of type I IFNs in the tumor microenvironment with immunostimulatory nucleic acids stimulates anti-tumoral T-cell responses. Experimental studies with adoptively transferred CD8+ T-cells revealed that progressively growing autochthonous melanomas can resist cytotoxic T-cell responses directed against melanocytic differentiation antigens through reversible dedifferentiation in an inflammatory microenvironment. Recent work demonstrated the ability of adoptively transferred CD4+ T-cells to cooperate with tumoricidal myeloid cells in the tumor microenvironment and orchestrate remote inflammatory tumor cell death. This mechanism can also eradicate MHC-deficient and IFN-unresponsive melanoma cell clones that evade direct recognition and cytolytic destruction by CD8+ T-cells. A long-term goal of the research group is the clinical translation of more effective, patient-specific treatment protocols that combine complementary approaches of cancer therapy to re-establish and maintain immune surveillance.