The Sunshine Lab is focused on improving our treatment options for aggressive, advanced and metastatic skin cancers, by helping the immune system recognize and destroy them. To do this, we:

1. Develop new approaches to activate the anti-tumor immune response to skin cancer using non-viral nucleic acid delivery systems. We have developed effective nanoparticle systems which can deliver plasmids or mRNA or siRNA to tumors and drive signal 1, signal 2, and signal 3 expression and/or modulate additional downstream or upstream machinery locally and are exploring the utility of that platform to treat aggressive skin cancers, locally or in combination with checkpoint immunotherapy. 

2. To better understand the immune response to skin cancer in human tumors, we are using multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF), spatial transcriptomics, microdissection, and artificial intelligence to develop improved biomarkers of treatment response and resistance. We are mapping the immunopathologic changes in the TME in patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibition, rigorously testing our mIF biomarkers, and extending our work on superficial spreading melanoma to rare melanoma subtypes including acral melanoma.

3. Apply our work on multiplex immunofluorescence (mIF) to map the landscape of the tumor immune microenvironment in our model systems.