Rakesh Jain, PhD, director of the Edwin Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Andrew Werk Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, is senior and corresponding author of a paper published in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, “IL-1β Blockade Prevents Cardiotoxicity and Improves Efficacy of Immune Checkpoint Blockers and Chemotherapy against Pancreatic Cancer in Mice with Obesity.

The 2025 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research will be presented to Rakesh K. Jain, PhD, Fellow of the AACR Academy, during the AACR Annual Meeting 2025, to be held April 25-30 at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Congratulations, Dr. Jain!!

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Ependymoma is a rare type of central nervous system tumors that arise in the supratentorial region, posterior fossa of the brain, or spinal cord. Extensive molecular analyses of ependymal tumors have revealed distinct molecular profiles despite being histologically similar. The lack of in vivo models that faithfully recapitulate the complex subgroups of ependymoma is a significant challenge for the development of effective treatment. Here, using ST-EPN-ZFTA in immunocompetent mice, we revealed that the immune landscape changes during tumor progression. Moreover, we show that dasatinib treatment reprograms the tumor immune microenvironment in ST-EPN-ZFTA to an immunostimulatory milieu and causes tumor regression. Our findings suggest that dasatinib is an effective therapy for this molecular subgroup of brain tumors.

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