Marlies Meisel, PhD

  • Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology

Education & Training

  • Postdoc, University of Chicago, 2013-2018
  • PhD, Medical University Innsbruck (Austria), 2012
  • MS in Nutritional Sciences, University of Vienna (Austria), 2007

Research Interests

The Meisel Lab explores the mechanisms of how the microbiota impacts on systemic immunity and thereby influences the etiopathogenesis of complex diseases, such as autoimmunity and cancer.

Project 1: Define mechanisms of how the microbiota enhances cancer immunotherapy in gut-distal cancer.

We recently uncovered that microbial signals drives myeloid cancer (Meisel and Hinterleitner et al., Nature 2018), highlighting the strong immunomodulatory potential of the gut microbiota on systemic immunity in the context of cancer. In my own lab, we recently discovered a mechanism of how the probiotic bacterium L. reuteri by using dietary tryptophan enhances CD8 T cell mediated cancer immunotherapy efficacy in melanoma (Bender et al., Cell 2023). By deploying a novel approach to profile the tumor microbiome at gut distal sites (Phelps et al., Star Protocols 2023) my lab performed culturomics on tumors and tissues and demonstrated for the first time that the tumor microbiome plays a direct role in enhancing antitumor immunity in melanoma.

In ongoing work we are excited to continue to test if there are other bacteria that are associated with response to cancer immunotherapy treatment in humans that enhance antitumor CD8 T cell immunity in preclinical models.

Project 2: Exploit the mechanism of how exercise enhance cancer immunotherapy efficacy.

Physical inactivity is one of the leading risk factors for noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, autoimmunity and cancer worldwide. There is numerous epidemiological and pre-clinical evidence of a beneficial role of physical exercise in preventing the development, increasing survival and enhancing the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.  While exercise is considered an integral component of “standard or care” therapy in primary and secondary prevention of cancer the mechanisms of how physical exercise mediates antitumor effects remain obscure.

In my lab we are exploring the mechanisms of how exercise enhances cancer immunotherapy efficacy- spoiler alert- we uncovered that the gut microbiota plays a critical role in exercise-enhancement of cancer immunotherapy efficacy.

Project 3: Explore the role of the tumor microbiome in melanoma.

Deploying our recent culturomics approach (Phelps et al., Star Protocols 2023), we are profiling the tumor microbiome of human melanoma patients that either responded or failed to respond to cancer immunotherapy.

In this project we are performing multi-omics (metabolomics, culturomics and scRNSseq) on human melanoma tumors and will test isolated bacteria and their metabolites in their ability to tune systemic immunity in pre-clinical cancer models.

Project 4: Define the mechanism of how the liver microbiome contributes to the etiopathogenesis of autoimmune hepatitis.

Highlighting the intriguing dichotomy of microbes on systemic immunity, my lab showed that the same probiotic bacterium L. reuteri aggravates CD8 T cell mediated autoimmunity in a genetically susceptible host (Pandey et al., Cell Host microbe 2022).

In this project we are dissecting the link between the local liver microbiome and the microbial metabolites that are linked with CD8 T cell mediated autoimmune hepatitis.

Website: https://www.meisel-hinterleitner-lab.com

Twitter: @MeiselLab

Publications