“Receiving this grant is a fortunate and humbling experience for me as an early-stage scientist”, Li says.
“I am also grateful for all the support and help from the people around me, especially my current supervisor Professor Kjetil Taskén”, he adds.
Li is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Cancer Research at the Institute of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oslo,
“The grant provides assurance to me and my collaborators that we are probably on the right path. It also serves as a motivation for us to continue our work, embrace the challenges along the way, and hopefully deliver some good science in the end”, he says.
Immunotherapy causes CTLs to kill cancer cells
The primary goal of cancer treatments is to induce cancer cell death.
Immunotherapy is one of the most successful strategies for cancer treatment. Many immunotherapy treatments depend on so-called cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) being able to eliminate other cells.
CTL are a type of immune cells in our body responsible for fighting cancer by causing cell death.
“Much research in immunotherapy focuses on what happens in CTLs or at the interface between CTLs and cancer cells. However, few researchers delve into the intricate events in cancer cells that lead to their death”, Li says.
In this project, he will therefore try to understand how CTLs mediate cell death in cancer.
Which signals give which types of cell death?
For CTLs to eliminate cancer cells through immunotherapy, the death signals must be activated internally within the cells. Which signals give which types of cell death?
“We will investigate signaling events associated with various types of cell death, and potentially undiscovered forms of cell death”, he says.
“We will also assess how these signals affect the anti-tumor immune responses”, he adds.
Interfering the individual signaling pathways in cancer cells
To do this, Li and colleagues will actively interfere the individual signaling pathways in cancer cells. These are signaling pathways that control the various processes that cells go through when they die.
The researchers will then investigate the consequences by using in vitro and in vivo models.
“This project will hopefully provide valuable tools and analysis that can be used to explore the death processes in cancer cells induced by CTLs, and advance our understanding of how the different types of cell death affect anti-cancer immunity”, Li says.
“Additionally, we hope to uncover new mechanisms and mediators regulating CTL-induced cancer cell death, which could potentially serve as novel targets to complement or enhance existing immunotherapy strategies”, he adds.
Research project for young talents
The aim of the Research Council's program Research project for young talents (FRIPRO) is to build up research talent at the start of their career. The grant is awarded to researchers under the age of 40 who have shown the potential to carry out research of high scientific quality.
13 of the 36 projects that received funding from FRIPRO this year were for researchers at the University of Oslo, with Li's project being the only new FRIPRO-funded project at the Faculty of Medicine.
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