Why doesn’t immunotherapy work on all lung cancer patients?

Immunotherapy is an effective form of treatment for some lung cancer patients – but certainly not all of them. Only around half of the patients benefit from the current treatment, and the varying response to the treatment may be due to several different factors. One explanation may be that the innate immune system is inactive in some patients, and Postdoc Kristine Raaby Gammelgaard will therefore investigate how the cancer cells can affect the immune system's response to treatment via the signal molecules they release.

The innate immune system detects and reacts to molecules associated with danger. It activates a range of immune cells with the help of signal molecules such as interferons, and in this project Kristine Raaby Gammelgaard will look into the role which type III interferons play in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Her hypothesis is that this has significance for the further activation of the immune system and thus for how patients react to treatment with immunotherapy when the NSCLC cells produce type III interferon rather than type I.

The grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark will finance Kristine Raaby Gammelgaard's salary during the postdoc programme, including a one-year research stay at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam.

This coverage is partly based on press material from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.

Contact

Postdoc & PhD Kristine Raaby Gammelgaard
Aarhus University, Department of Biomedicine
Mobile: (+45) 24 21 31 23
Email: kraaby@biomed.au.dk