Our Focus
The Peeper laboratory develops and uses function-based genomic approaches to better understand the mechanistic principles of cancer progression, and to identify novel therapeutic targets for achieving more durable clinical responses for cancer patients. We have two main strategies.
- First, we are increasing our understanding of how cancer cells function and particularly how they rewire their signaling networks. This allows for the identification of specific and pharmacologically tractable cancer vulnerabilities.
- Second, we are manipulating both tumor and immune cells to increase the impact of cancer therapy. This approach, too, should uncover new targets amenable to therapy on both tumor and immune cells.
Our objective is to contribute to the development of combinatorial therapies, which simultaneously eliminate the patients’ tumor cells and harness their immune cells. To maximize these efforts, Daniel Peeper and Christian Blank (a clinician researcher/medical oncologist) have engaged in a partnership to complement their respective basic and clinical expertise, facilitating translation of their laboratory findings (therapeutic targets, prognostic and predictive biomarkers) to the clinic, particularly by initiating trials.
