CS-IRTG - Vision and Mission

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The CS-IRTG
Mission & Vision

The CS-IRTG vision is to train and educate a scientific community of PhDs or MD/PhDs with a strong dedication to improve lung cancer diagnostics and therapies. Therefore, methods from a broad range of pathology, genetics, oncology, and data sciences are being applied. Above-average dedication to lung cancer research and willingness to engage in scientific exchange programs with the partner institution in Germany and Korea are mandatory for successful applicants.

Equally, we ask for team building and openness for scientific collaboration in an international environment.

Research Focus

Non-small cell lung cancer represents the leading cause of death from cancer worldwide. The last decade witnessed major areas of innovation in treatment, i.e. introduction of targeted therapies, immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies and antibody drug conjugates. In addition, personalized tumor vaccines are emerging as a potential new therapeutic option. However, still huge medical needs remain for those tumors that escape from targeted and immune therapies early on and more so for those that elicit no further genomically defined driver or resistance mutation. Therefore, this IRTG aims to address mechanisms of resistance within four defined areas:

Genomic instability driven by p53 deficiency

Instability in tumor genomes and effects on microenvironment driven by metabolic shift and stress, .

Heterogeneity in KRAS-driven tumors and tumors with germ-line variants for lung cancer risk.

In silico technologies that reconstruct evolutionary trajectories and AI-based analysis of tumor features.

Based on these, we expect to generate informative models predicting risk and mechanisms of resistance and (poly) clonal evolution in locally advanced or systemic lung cancers and therapy. Our aim is to identify key parameters of resistance evolution in a clinically meaningful manner, enabling us to develop and evaluate combined therapies for high-risk genomes using preclinical models. In addition, we will be able to compare Caucasian and Asian NSCLC patients with respect to mechanistic differences in genomic, immunological, metabolic or hereditary risks for resistance.