Cancer immunotherapy depends on successful communication between different immune cells that work together to recognize and destroy tumors. However, many cancers develop ways to disrupt these interactions, allowing tumors to evade immune attack and resist treatment. 

Dr. Weiner develops advanced computational tools to study how immune cells behave and communicate within tumors. His earlier research combined bioengineering, artificial intelligence, and cancer genomics to analyze how tumors evolve and how immune cells respond to therapy. 

This project seeks to bridge a major gap in cancer research: while modern genomic technologies can reveal which genes are active inside immune cells, they cannot easily capture the dynamic physical behaviors that determine whether immune cells successfully attack cancer. 

To address this challenge, Dr. Weiner will combine live-cell imaging, genomic profiling, and artificial intelligence to observe thousands of immune cells interacting with one another and with cancer cells in real time. Using these data, he will create a “digital library” of successful and failed immune responses. 

The goal is to identify the cellular behaviors and interactions that lead to effective anti-cancer immunity and use this knowledge to improve the design of immunotherapies. This work could help accelerate the development of safer, more effective immune-based treatments and provide entirely new ways to study how tumors resist immune attack. 

Mentor

Barbara Engelhardt, PhD, Matthew Spitzer, PhD

Projects and Grants

Spatiotemporal modeling of cellular interactions to guide next-generation immunotherapies