Towards precision medicine for malignant pleural mesothelioma

Principal Investigator: 
Prof. Ren-Wang Peng, Departments of General Thoracic Surgery & BioMedical Research (DBMR), University of Bern. For more information, please visit the website.

Co-Principal Investigator: 
PD Dr. Patrick Dorn, Department of General Thoracic Surgery, Inselspital. For more information, please visit the website.

Co-Principal Investigator: 
Prof. Erik Vassella, Institute of Pathology, University of Bern. For more information, please visit the following websites:
Institute of Pathology, University of Bern
Clinical Genomics Lab, Inselspital

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a lethal thoracic cancer largely due to the lack of targeted therapy and resistance to chemo- and immunotherapies, highlighting the need for precision oncology-based treatments. The goals of our project are to identify MPM subsets using single-cell transcriptomics of primary MPM and the tumor microenvironment (TME), model the disease with patient-derived organoids (PDO), and investigate subtype-specific vulnerabilities using functional genomics. Unfolding the cellular and molecular landscapes of MPM and the TME promises to uncover mechanisms of chemoresistance, biomarkers to stratify subpopulation eligible for immunotherapy, and novel therapeutic targets tailored to subgroups.