According to recent and predictive data from the European Cancer Information System, the incidence of cancer within the EU will rise by 20% until 2040. As cancer is a very heterogenous disease, treatment is difficult and more suitable cancer therapeutics are desperately needed. A new hot avenue in cancer therapy is immunotherapy, i.e. the modulation of the immune system in order to activate it so it can kill the cancer cells. This can for example be done by polarizing macrophages to a more inflammatory phenotype. To do so, new drugs are being developed. However, it is likely that already established drugs, that have been approved for other purposes, unknowingly posses this property. We therefore aim to screen 340 commonly used drugs for their macrophage polarizing properties, hoping to find suitable candidates for potential off-label treatment use.

2024

2025