CRIS CLINICAL TALENT PROGRAMME 2021
Introduction:
We tend to see prostate cancer as relatively benign and curable, but approximately 10% of patients have metastases and do not respond to usual treatments. These patients have a life expectancy of less than 3 years, and account for the majority of prostate cancer deaths.
The emergence of immunotherapy treatments has opened many doors to patients with all types of tumours, but in the case of prostate cancer the results have not been particularly good. However, when it does work, patients remain tumour-free for a long time. Therefore, patients who are to receive immunotherapy treatments must be selected more accurately.
Project:
In this project, Dr Nuria Romero and her team will use state-of-the-art techniques to identify features in the patient’s blood that distinguish which patients with metastatic prostate cancer will respond to immunotherapy treatments. These results will be of great importance, since they will enable doctors to treat patients with this aggressive type of tumour more precisely, to seek new therapeutic strategies and, potentially, to save the lives of many patients.