New immunotherapy drugs to combat lung cancer

João Barata

Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Portugal

Lung cancer is the tumour with the highest mortality. Although advances in immunotherapy have improved survival rates, many patients relapse within a few years and more than half develop metastasis.

Drugs that block the PD-1 protein have revolutionised the survival of these patients in recent years by boosting the immune response against cancer cells. However, new therapeutic approaches are needed.

The project focuses on finding new drugs to target another protein, IL7R, which is essential in the development of T cells that are key for antitumour responses, but which can also be expressed in large quantities by lung cancer cells and used to promote tumour progression and resistance to drugs that block the PD-1 protein.

• Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Spain

• Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), Spain

IL7R in lung cancer development, metastasis and resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy

€999,962