Maxime Meylan, PhD

Maxime Meylan, PhD, is an Instructor in Immunology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School mentored by Kai Wucherpfennig, MD, PhD. His research focuses on how the organization of the tumor microenvironment shapes antitumor immune responses and determines whether T cells can effectively reach and eliminate cancer cells.

During his postdoctoral training, Dr. Meylan investigated T cell responses in patients with recurrent glioblastoma treated with an oncolytic herpes virus. By integrating spatial transcriptomics, highly multiplexed tissue imaging, and T-cell receptor tracking, he showed how treatment reactivates pre-existing tumor-reactive T cells and sustains their activity within tumors. His current work turns to understanding how tumor cell states and spatial tissue organization create barriers to T-cell infiltration in triple-negative breast cancer, with the goal of identifying strategies to overcome immune exclusion.

Dr. Meylan earned his PhD in Immunology at Sorbonne Université, with Wolf H. Fridman, MD, PhD, and Aurélien de Reyniès, PhD. His doctoral research focused on B-cell responses and tertiary lymphoid structures in cancer, revealing how these organized immune niches mediate local antibody-producing responses within tumors.