A University of Â鶹´«Ã½ at ²Ñ¨¡²Ô´Ç²¹ research team is working to improve lung cancer treatment by developing new ways to predict which patients will respond to immunotherapy and identify treatments that can overcome resistance. The five-year, approximately $3.26 million National Institutes of Health grant supports the (JABSOM) and the research team.
The project, “Novel Biomarkers for Predicting and Improving Immunotherapy Response in Lung Cancer,” runs through July 2031. It is led by Youping Deng, professor and director of JABSOM‘s Bioinformatics Core Facility, who also serves at the UH Cancer Center’s Biology Program and Genomics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource.
By combining a predictive biomarker (a biological molecule that helps predict how a patient will respond to treatment) with a potential therapeutic approach, the project aims to help physicians select treatments more precisely while creating new options for patients whose tumors do not respond to existing immunotherapies.
While immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs)—a type of immunotherapy that blocks the proteins cancer cells use to hide from the immune system, allowing it to better recognize and attack them— have transformed non-small cell lung cancer treatment, resistance remains a hurdle, and current biomarkers are not always accurate in predicting patient response.
“Our team has discovered a new biomarker that may more effectively predict treatment response, as well as a promising therapeutic target that could help overcome ICI resistance,” Deng said. “This NIH R01 grant will allow us to validate these discoveries and move them closer to clinical application.”
The research team includes JABSOM‘s Shaoqiu Chen and Li Ma, and the UH Cancer Center’s Owen Chan and Xin Chen.
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