Tumor Biology and Targeted Therapy

Course description

Cancer is one of the diseases with the most lethality worldwide and in 2018 it was estimated 10 million deaths. Most patients undergo traditional anti-cancer therapy, which is decided by the oncologist. Even though nowadays the survival of the patients has been improved, we are still far away from rescuing the majority of the cancer patients.

The central questions in cancer biology and in the clinic include:

1) Why it is difficult to find a common cure for cancer?
2) Why after the treatment, cancer is coming back/relapsing in the same patient?
3) Why cancer cells sometimes escape the therapy and instead become even more aggressive?
4) Which therapy is best for a certain type of cancer?

These are the questions that we will address in this course. In addition, you will learn about the selection and decision making for giving a certain anti-cancer drug to the patient. The students will also be introduced to different classes of anti-cancer drugs. General mechanisms that lead to cancer patients’ death involve the metastasis of cancer cells to a distant organ, and the cancer relapse caused by tumor resistance to drugs. Therefore, in this course, we will highlight the mechanisms responsible for cancer relapse, drug resistance, and newly developed strategies used to treat relapsed patients.

The course will cover specific research topics, including:

• Biology of tumor cells – genetic and epigenetic changes, signaling pathways alterations
• Cancer stem cells – the concept and the therapeutic consequences
• Mechanisms of tumor development and metastasis formation
• Importance of immune protection against cancer – immuno-surveillance
• Cancer treatments – diversity of treatments including cell based-immunotherapy
• Emergence of drug resistance – mechanisms

More information can be found at http://kursplaner.lu.se/pdf/kurs/en/VMFN33