Developing new therapies

In collaboration with other laboratories at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard and partners from the pharmaceutical industry, the Jänne Lab screens newly developed agents and large-scale compound libraries against patient-derived cell lines and patient-derived xenograft mouse models with unique genetic signatures. Our goal is to:

• Identify and further develop therapies against oncogenic and/or resistance-imparting mutations with no available or no satisfactory treatment options
• Design therapeutic approaches to address biological processes that can be exploited to target cancer cells more effectively and permanently
• Translate laboratory findings to directly benefit patients with no clear alternative treatment option

Major topics to which we apply the above strategies include:

• Development of alternative approaches to target EGFR and EGFR-governed pathways, such as EGFR allosteric inhibitors, EGFR degraders, and novel drug combinations
• Characterization and targeting of persistence in multiple lung cancer genotypes
• Study of KRAS, MAPK- and parallel-pathway inhibition in RAS mutated NSCLC
• Characterization of mutant MET biology and development of MET-specific therapies
• Study of wild type and mutant HER2 in NSCLC and their potential as a therapeutic (co)target; development of HER2-specific therapies
• Characterization of SCLC biology and novel targeting strategies