Melissa Quino Reeves

Melissa Quino Reeves, PhD

Languages spoken: English

Academic Information

Departments Primary - Pathology

Academic Office Information

melissa.reeves@hci.utah.edu

Melissa Reeves earned her PhD from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) where she studied tumor heterogeneity and clonal evolution of skin tumors from benign to malignant to metastatic stages. She received the prestigious Sandler Fellowship to start her own independent lab at UCSF in 2017, studying how tumor heterogeneity impacts the way the immune system responds to cancer. The Reeves Lab moved to the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah in 2022.

Research Statement

The Reeves Lab studies tumor heterogeneity and how it impacts the immune response to cancer. We have established a powerful novel system to model tumor heterogeneity in vivo, in which we can establish and modulate heterogeneous tumors made up of multiple, fluorescently-labeled tumor populations. Using the fluorescent labels, we can track each population within the tumor to study how heterogeneity shapes the spatial organization of immune cells and immune activity within a tumor. We are also investigating the impact of neoantigen heterogeneity—which arises from mutation heterogeneity—on the anti-tumor T cell response, and tumor evolution following immunotherapy.

Education History

Undergraduate Harvard University
 BA
Graduate Training University of California, San Francisco
 PhD

Selected Publications

Journal Article

  1. Huang PY, Kandyba E, Jabouille A, Sjolund J, Kumar A, Halliwill K, McCreery M, DelRosario R, Kang HC, Wong CE, Seibler J, Beuger V, Pellegrino M, Sciambi A, Eastburn DJ, Balmain A (2017). Lgr6 is a stem cell marker in mouse skin squamous cell carcinoma. Nat Genet, 49(11), 1624-1632.
  2. Wang H, Song X, Liao H, Wang P, Zhang Y, Che L, Zhang J, Zhou Y, Cigliano A, Ament C, Superville D, Ribback S, Reeves M, Pes GM, Liang B, Wu H, Evert M, Calvisi DF, Zeng Y, Chen X (2021). Overexpression of Mothers Against Decapentaplegic Homolog 7 Activates the Yes-Associated Protein/NOTCH Cascade and Promotes Liver Carcinogenesis in Mice and Humans. Hepatology, 74(1), 248-263.
  3. Smith CC, Lasater EA, Lin KC, Wang Q, McCreery MQ, Stewart WK, Damon LE, Perl AE, Jeschke GR, Sugita M, Carroll M, Kogan SC, Kuriyan J, Shah NP (2014). Crenolanib is a selective type I pan-FLT3 inhibitor. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 111(14), 5319-24.
  4. McCreery MQ, Halliwill KD, Chin D, Delrosario R, Hirst G, Vuong P, Jen KY, Hewinson J, Adams DJ, Balmain A (2015). Evolution of metastasis revealed by mutational landscapes of chemically induced skin cancers. Nat Med, 21(12), 1514-20.
  5. Reeves MQ, Kandyba E, Harris S, Del Rosario R, Balmain A (2018). Multicolour lineage tracing reveals clonal dynamics of squamous carcinoma evolution from initiation to metastasis. Nat Cell Biol, 20(6), 699-709.
  6. Rudolph M, McCreery MQ, Frey W, Hashmi AS (2011). High chemoselectivity in the phenol synthesis. Beilstein J Org Chem, 7, 794-801.
  7. Dodagatta-Marri E, Meyer DS, Reeves MQ, Paniagua R, To MD, Binnewies M, Broz ML, Mori H, Wu D, Adoumie M, Del Rosario R, Li O, Buchmann T, Liang B, Malato J, Arce Vargus F, Sheppard D, Hann BC, Mirza A, Quezada SA, Rosenblum MD, Krummel MF, Balmain A, Akhurst RJ (2019). ¿-PD-1 therapy elevates Treg/Th balance and increases tumor cell pSmad3 that are both targeted by ¿-TGFß antibody to promote durable rejection and immunity in squamous cell carcinomas. J Immunother Cancer, 7(1), 62.
  8. Fitch BA, Zhou M, Situ J, Surianarayanan S, Reeves MQ, Hermiston ML, Wiemels JL, Kogan S (2022). Decreased IL-10 accelerates B-cell leukemia/lymphoma in a mouse model of pediatric lymphoid leukemia. Blood advances, 6(3), 854-865.
  9. Reeves M (2024). Mapping the transcriptional evolution of human metastatic breast cancer. The Journal of clinical investigation, 134(17),
  10. Tanaka M, Lum L, Hu KH, Chaudhary P, Hughes S, Ledezma-Soto C, Samad B, Superville D, Ng K, Chumber A, Benson C, Adams ZN, Kersten K, Aguilar OA, Fong L, Combes AJ, Krummel MF, Reeves M (2025). Tumor cell heterogeneity drives spatial organization of the intratumoral immune response. The Journal of experimental medicine, 222(6),
  11. Li YR, Kandyba E, Halliwill K, Delrosario R, Tran Q, Bayani N, Wu D, Mirzoeva OK, Reeves MQ, Islam SMA, Riva L, Bergstrom EN, Achanta K, DiGiovanni J, Alexandrov LB, Balmain (2025). Long term latency of highly mutated cells in normal mouse skin is reversed by exposure to tumor promoters and chronic tissue damage. Cancer discovery,
  12. Greiner D, Xue Q, Waddell TQ, Kurudza E, Chaudhary P, Belote RL, Dotti G, Judson-Torres RL, Reeves MQ, Cheshier SH, Roh-Johnson (2025). Human CSPG4-targeting CAR-macrophages inhibit melanoma growth. Oncogene, 44(22), 1665-1677.