Thu, Oct 26th 2023
Two cancer research projects from Switzerland and Austria have received the Swiss Bridge Award. The prize money of 250,000 Swiss francs each is intended to contribute to a better understanding of the development of therapy resistance in cancer.
Lukas Flatz of the Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen and his research group are looking for markers that indicate resistance in skin cancer, according to a media release issued by the Swiss Bridge Foundation on Tuesday. The researchers have found evidence that a process called tumor differentiation should be responsible for the resistance of a new form of therapy for certain skin cancers. The award-winning research project aims to investigate this hypothesis.
The leader of the second award-winning research project, Anna Christina Obenauf from the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, is investigating therapy resistance in lung cancer with her research group. The project aims to study a specific type of cancer cells that survive therapeutic treatment and eventually become insensitive to therapy, so-called persister cells.
Most cancer patients initially respond well to their therapies. Over time, however, resistance to these therapies can develop, causing the treatments to stop working and the cancer to spread uncontrollably through the body, according to the announcement.
The exact causes and how such therapy resistance develops are not yet sufficiently understood, Swiss Bridge said in explaining its choice of award-winning projects.
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