Thanks to a philanthropic donation to the prestigious Swiss Cancer Center of Lausanne a collaboration between Swiss Cancer Center and MAD for Cancer was made possible. One third of the donation will support parts of the MAD for Cancer program, represented by Professors Åke Borg, Thoas Fioretos, Carl Borrebaeck and Kristian Pietras.

The collaboration is divided in two main branches, in which Åke and Kristian collaborate with Professor Douglas Hanahan and Cathrin Brisken in projects related to breast cancer, and Carl and Thoas collaborate with Professor George Coukos in projects related to tumor immunology. The breast cancer team is focused on studies of tumor cells and their microenvironment with the goal to identify signaling pathways that (i) are crucial for basal-like breast cancer, the most aggressive breast cancer subtype, and (ii) block the development of resistance to endocrine therapy.

The tumor immunology team is focused on identifying novel targets on immunoregulatory cells as T cells and dendritic cells, as well as identifying new targets for CAR-T cells.