Research
Drug resistance and new cancer treatments : C. Gongora

One of the main causes of failure in cancer treatment is the development of drug resistance by cancer cells. In the past decades, new drugs (particularly the so-called targeted therapies, such as monoclonal antibodies or tyrosine kinase inhibitors and immune checkpoint inhibitors) have been developed to bypass therapeutic failure in cancer treatment. However, the assessment of these targeted therapies, either alone or in combination with standard cytotoxic agents, in clinical trials shows that, although some are efficient and have been subsequently approved for routine clinical use, many of them are not. Indeed, most solid tumors display huge genomic complexity and therefore multiple pathways or networks need to be targeted to affect tumor survival. Furthermore, the assessment of the efficacy of a new drug can be complicated by inter- and intra-patient pharmacokinetic variations that can result in unpredictable toxicity and variable anticancer effects.

The research project of this group focus on optimizing drug therapy in solid tumor models. The main axes of our research project are: a) the identification of innovative targets, b) the development of treatments to overcome drug resistance, c) the comprehension of drug responses and d) the identification of biomarkers of cancer development and drug resistance.

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