Organisation profile

Hypoxic stress in the tumor microenvironment is associated with tumor resistance to anti-cancer therapies. Hypoxia has been reported to play a key role in shielding tumour cells from immune cell attack either by promoting immune suppression, or by inducing many other oncogenic events and/or resistance mechanism (e.g. autophagy) in cancer cells, allowing tumour to escape from immune cell attack. We are interested in studying the molecular mechanism by which hypoxia allows cancer cells escape from immune surveillance and to investigate how targeting autophagy could improve cancer immunotherapy by switching the tumor microenvironment from immunosuppressive to immunopermissive for cytotoxic immune cells. Our collaboration with Gustave Roussy Cancer Center (France) allows us to conduct research at the interface between fundamental and clinically-oriented research programs.