Goran Micevic, MD, PhD, FAAD is a PhD-trained dermatologist interested in understanding how the immune system interacts with cancer in the skin. Dr. Micevic's initial interest in skin cancer stems from the Micevic family’s predisposition and subsequent experiences being treated for skin cancer. During training, Dr. Micevic had the opportunity to care for hundreds of patients with melanoma and witnessed the revolution brought upon by immune-modulating therapies. At the same time, Dr. Micevic witnessed the profound grief and disappointment when the same therapies stop working or fail to achieve a response.
The fundamental mechanisms governing T-cell interactions with melanoma cells, how different T-cell populations contribute to the anti-melanoma response, and how these interactions dictate clinical response remain poorly understood. Dr. Micevic's goal is to understand the antitumor immune response in the skin, with a focus on melanoma. Dr. Micevic envisions integrating tissue spatial transcriptomics from human tissue samples and single cell immunophenotyping to decipher the epigenetic regulation of antitumor responses in the skin. Using genetically engineered mouse models and clinical tissue samples, Dr. Micevic hopes to define the key epigenetic features that define functional T cell states as well as strategies to reprogram them. Reprogramming T-cell function could have broad applications in tumor immunology in general, but also in controlling chronic skin infections and treating autoimmune skin disease.
With patients and family members in mind, Dr. Micevic looks forward to a dedicated career in pursuit of improving therapies for skin cancers by understanding the key tumor-immune interactions in the skin as a physician-scientist.
Submitted by Reiko Fitzsimonds on March 02, 2023