Tobias Bald Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2017

Tobias Bald

Tobias Bald, is an international Fellow in the Laboratory of Prof Mark Smyth in the Department of Immunology at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia. He obtained his M.Sc. and PhD in Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Bonn where he received training in tumor immunology and tumor biology in the lab of Prof Thomas Tueting. In the last years Dr Bald focused on the balance between anti-tumor immunity and pro-tumorigenic inflammatory responses using genetically engineered mouse models which portray the clinical situation of melanoma patients. Recently, Dr. Bald could show that targeted activation of the type I IFN system with immunostimulatory RNA in combination with blockade of immune inhibitory receptors serve as a rational strategy to expose immune cell-poor melanomas to cellular immune surveillance. Furthermore, Dr Bald established and characterized novel genetically engineered mouse melanoma model systems to experimentally investigate the interaction between innate immune, endothelial and melanoma cells. Using these model systems, he demonstrated that UVB-irradiation promotes a Trl4 driven innate inflammatory response which reactivates embryonic programs and fosters the interaction of melanoma cells with endothelial cells leading to increased numbers of lung metastases. Currently, Dr Bald is studying the immunosuppressive role of innate immune cells during tumor development and immunotherapy.