Dr. Alan Tackett

In recent years, new immunotherapy drugs have revolutionized how clinicians treat patients with certain cancers like melanoma. For some patients, immunotherapy can effectively eliminate cancer from the body – unfortunately in other patients these drugs show little benefit. Dr. Alan Tackett is interested in understanding why some patients show limited response to immunotherapies and then leveraging this information to design new cancer therapies to help all patients realize the lifesaving benefits of immunotherapy. His work is specifically focused on immunotherapy treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma. Towards these efforts, Dr. Tackett leads a translational team of researchers, oncologists, surgeons, and pathologists at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.