Leveraging the innate immune system to improve lung cancer treatments

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related deaths worldwide. One of the greatest advances in cancer treatment has been the development of immune augmenting therapies that reactivate the anti-tumour T-cell response. However, despite their promise, around 80% of lung cancer patients do not respond or relapse following immunotherapy. What gets lost, or underappreciated in highlighting these approaches however, it the critical role of the innate immune system in the maturation and activity of the adaptive immune system. In this PhD project you will interrogate the potential of targeting the innate immune system to augment current lung cancer treatments. You will take advantage of sophisticated mouse models of cancer, functional genomics, proteomics, molecular biology and biochemistry to identify novel therapeutic strategies.