Research
Oncogenic pathways in lung cancer : A. Maraver

Lung cancer kills about a million people every year worldwide being the leading cause of death by cancer in the world. Oncogenic addiction has been therapeutically exploited in a subset of lung adenocarcinoma patients harboring genetic alterations in different oncogenes such as EGFR, ALK, MET, ROS, or RET thanks to the development of tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKIs). Although these patients have in general a good initial response they always develop resistance by a plethora of mechanisms including new mutations, also called gatekeeper mutations. At this stage there is only conventional platin-based chemotherapy to offer to the patients, but also rapidly develop resistance against this treatment.

Using state-of the art lung cancer genetic engineered preclinical models (some of them unique to our laboratory), lung cancer patient-derived xenografts, as well as clinical samples, our group endeavors to tackle resistance to all these treatments in lung adenocarcinoma by combining the inhibition of oncogen addiction, trough the use of different tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and of non-oncogen addiction, by using the Notch pathway as an example. The major objective is to establish rational combination therapies with the final goal of developing clinical trials at our local hospital, ICM.

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