About

Stefani Spranger is an associate professor at MIT working to understand why some cancers do not respond to immunotherapy, with the goal of making them more vulnerable to immune attack. Her research focuses on discovering how tumors suppress immune responses, particularly investigating the mechanisms behind immune evasion in cancers such as lung, ovarian, and glioblastoma. Her work has led to a better understanding of the factors that control T-cell responses to tumors and explores ways to improve these responses through vaccination or immune-stimulating molecules called cytokines. Spranger's background includes studying biology at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, where she developed an interest in cell biology and immunology. She completed her PhD working on adoptive T-cell transfer therapy, a promising immunotherapy approach. After her PhD, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago, studying immune responses to tumors and discovering why some melanoma patients do not respond to immunotherapy. She was drawn to MIT by its collaborative environment and the opportunity to work with engineers at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Her research involves building model systems to study immune responses in different tumor types and tissues, with a focus on overcoming immunosuppression in cancers that are resistant to current therapies.

Research topics

• Biology
• Immunology
• Cancer research
• Cell biology
• Internal medicine
• Genetics
• Medicine
• Biochemistry

Selected publications

• Mechanisms, Microenvironments, and Models: Understanding Therapeutic Resistance in Glioblastoma

  International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics · 2026-04-01

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Mapping intratumor heterogeneity across layers for advancing immunotherapy

  Cell · 2026-04-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figure 1 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Supplementary Figure 1. Antigen presentation landscape of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory macrophages.</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table 6 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Copies per cell presentation on GBM tumor cells post co-culture with BMDM</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table 10 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Peptide quantification in TMT labeled GL261 or CT2A KO co-cultured macrophages and naïve macrophage</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table 7 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Peptide quantification in TMT labeled pro-inflammatory macrophages and naïve macrophage</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figure 7 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Supplementary Figure 7. Antigen presentation landscape of GBM tumor cells in macrophage co-culture.</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Figure 4 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Supplementary Figure 4. NF-kb activation in GBM co-cultured macrophages.</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table 8 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Peptide quantification in TMT labeled anti-flammatory macrophages and naïve macrophage</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplementary Table 1 from Quantitative Cell Type–Specific Immunopeptidome Analysis of Macrophage and Tumor Coevolution Reveals Therapeutic MHC-I Peptides in Glioblastoma

  2025-12-15

  articleOpen access

  <p>Flow cytometry antibody information</p>

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K99CA204595

  NIH · $147k · 2018

• Tumor-intrinsic oncogenic alterations and evasion of anti-tumor immunity

  NIH · $747k · 2017–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas F. Gajewski

  University of Chicago

  98 shared

• Maria Zagorulya

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  59 shared

• Brendan Horton

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  59 shared

• Jason J. Luke

  55 shared

• Riyue Bao

  53 shared

• Darrell J. Irvine

  Scripps Research Institute

  52 shared

• K. Dane Wittrup

  50 shared

• J. Christopher Love

  IIT@MIT

  47 shared