Bedumer Winterloop 2016 fund raising for drug development

A project of Professor Alexander Dömling. Immuno-oncology is a silent revolution with major impact for cancer patients in the near future. Since the inauguration of the field of immunology by Paul Ehrlich beginning of last century, scientists were always puzzled why cancer can hide from the otherwise so effective human immune system. Despite multiple trials to understand the mechanism of escape from immune surveillance only recent major scientific breakthrough helped to uncover the mechanism by which cancer fools the immune cells. More importantly, this work was translated from bench to bedside and is now regarded as one of the major breakthroughs of oncology in the last 100 years. As a consequence of two recently approved drugs helping the immune system, cancer in many cases can now be regarded as a chronic disease which in former time was absolutely deadly.

The Drug Design group of Prof.Dr. A.S.S. Dömling (GRIP) and collaborators are internationally leading the field of development of small molecular weight cancer immunology drugs. They have recently solved and reported the first structure of the interaction between the immunosupressive cancer receptor and the receptor on the immune cells which now helps to elucidate how cancer fools the immune system on a molecular level. And of course understanding these molecular mechanisms is the prerequisite to find a cure. The money collected through the UMCG Kanker research fonds at the Bedumer Winterloop will help to collect important data which will form the start of the development of a new generation of even more effective immune-modulatory anti-cancer drugs. Prof. A. Dömling is also founding member of the immunocancer think tank , an international expert group dedicated to bring the best immuno-oncology solutions to the patients.