Harnessing the immune system to tackle cancer
Professor Awen Gallimore
Professor Awen Gallimore has been awarded £1.2m of funding from Cancer Research UK to further her research into cancer immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is an exciting field of research that works by ‘waking up’ a patient’s immune system to fight cancer cells.
Tumours rely on a network of blood vessels to give them food and oxygen to survive.
Professor Gallimore is researching a special type of blood vessel and finding out if these special blood vessels can help cancer-fighting immune cells get into tumours more effectively.
She’s testing new immunotherapy approaches, combining current therapies against tumour vessels with other immunotherapies.
A better understanding of how these blood vessels grow, as well as how they interact with the immune system, could lead to new ways of using immunotherapy to help fight cancer.
We hope this research will translate into new treatments for people with cancer in the future.