About the Authors

Reinhard Hinterleitner

Contributed equally to this work with: Reinhard Hinterleitner, Thomas Gruber, Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair, Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni, Dominik Wolf, Gottfried Baier

Affiliation Department of Pharmacology and Genetics, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

Thomas Gruber

Contributed equally to this work with: Reinhard Hinterleitner, Thomas Gruber, Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair, Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni, Dominik Wolf, Gottfried Baier

Affiliation Department of Pharmacology and Genetics, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair

Contributed equally to this work with: Reinhard Hinterleitner, Thomas Gruber, Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair, Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni, Dominik Wolf, Gottfried Baier

Affiliation Department of Pharmacology and Genetics, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni

Contributed equally to this work with: Reinhard Hinterleitner, Thomas Gruber, Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair, Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni, Dominik Wolf, Gottfried Baier

Affiliations Department of Pharmacology and Genetics, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria, Laboratory of Tumor Immunology, Tyrolean Cancer Research Institute, Innsbruck, Austria

Alexander Tzankov

Affiliation Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Manfred Schuster

Affiliation Apeiron-Biologics AG, Vienna, Austria

Josef M. Penninger

Affiliation Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

Hans Loibner

Affiliation Apeiron-Biologics AG, Vienna, Austria

Günther Lametschwandtner

Affiliation Apeiron-Biologics AG, Vienna, Austria

Dominik Wolf

Contributed equally to this work with: Reinhard Hinterleitner, Thomas Gruber, Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair, Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni, Dominik Wolf, Gottfried Baier

Affiliations Laboratory of Tumor Immunology, Tyrolean Cancer Research Institute, Innsbruck, Austria, Department of Hematology and Oncology, Medical University Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Gottfried Baier

Contributed equally to this work with: Reinhard Hinterleitner, Thomas Gruber, Christa Pfeifhofer-Obermair, Christina Lutz-Nicoladoni, Dominik Wolf, Gottfried Baier

Gottfried.Baier@i-med.ac.at

Affiliation Department of Pharmacology and Genetics, Medical University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

Competing Interests

Conflicts of interest: The authors hold shares in Apeiron Biologics, a company involved in the development of Cbl-b antagonists. Apeiron Biologics Forschungs and Tiroler Landeskrankenanstalten GmbH are the company partners within the COMET Center ONCOTYROL funded by the Austrian Federal Ministries BMVIT/BMWFJ (via FFG) and the Tiroler Zukunftsstiftung/Standortagentur Tirol (SAT). There has not been direct funding by these two company partners. Nevertheless and because of this fruitful cooperation, there are coauthors employed by a commercial company Apeiron-Biologics AG. Yet, this does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The authors' names that hold shares in Apeiron Biologics are Manfred Schuster, Josef M. Penninger, Hans Loibner and Günther Lametschwandtner.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: RH TG CPO CLN AT MS JMP HL GL DW GB. Performed the experiments: RH TG CPO CLN AT. Analyzed the data: RH TG CPO CLN DW GB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JMP GL. Wrote the paper: RH TG CPO GB.