Alan J. Tackett, Ph.D.

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.

Shields BD, Mahmoud F, Taylor EM, Byrum SD, Sengupta D, Koss B, Baldini G, Ransom S, Cline K, Mackintosh SG, Edmondson RD, Shalin S, Tackett AJ. Indicators of responsiveness to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Nature Sci Rep. 2017 Apr 11;7(1):807.

Sengupta D, Byrum SD, Avaritt NL, Davis L, Shields B, Mahmoud F, Reynolds M, Orr LM, Mackintosh SG, Shalin SC, Tackett AJ. Quantitative Histone Mass Spectrometry Identifies Elevated Histone H3 Lysine 27 (Lys27) Trimethylation in Melanoma. Mol Cell Proteomics. 2016 Mar;15(3):765-75.

Shields BD, Tackett AJ, Shalin SC. Proteomics and melanoma: a current perspective. Glob Dermatol. 2016 Aug;3(4):366-370.

Byrum SD, Larson SK, Avaritt NL, Moreland LE, Mackintosh SG, Cheung WL, Tackett AJ. Quantitative Proteomics Identifies Activation of Hallmark Pathways of Cancer in Patient Melanoma. J Proteomics Bioinform. 2013 Mar 1;6(3):43-50.

• Pubmed link to additional publications
• IDeA National Resource for Proteomics
• Center for Translational Pediatric Research