MTA-DE Cell Biology and Signalling Research Group - Background

Most of the classical tumor therapy regimes (often after surgery) are based on radiation- and chemotherapies aiming the proliferating cells non-selectively. The successes of therapies aiming at well-defined targets (e.g. imatinib or the humanized antibody trastuzumab) suggest that changes are needed in the paradigm, the tumor therapies should have specified targets in increasing numbers, and the final aim should be the development of personalized oncotherapy with high specificity.  At the same time the efficacy of global treatments can be enhanced significantly by revealing the mechanisms of the primary and acquired resistance of tumors against various anti-tumor therapies.

Finding new targets in cancer therapies can be significantly improved if we focus not only on the tumor tissues but on the interactions between tumor cells and the surrounding stroma and the tumor infiltrating immune cells. Revealing the functions of tumor associated stroma can identify novel targets in tumor therapy.  Lately the specificity of the classical immune therapies has been significantly improved by introducing the „designer” T-cells which are genetically modified with Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CARs), thereby significantly increasing the repertoire the anti-cancer therapy regimes.

Our aim is to investigate the components of the tumor, stroma and immune cells all together as a system and to reveal the regulations of the signal transductions, transcriptions and metabolism of these components in order to increase the efficacy of novel personalized cancer therapies.