Responses to targeted cancer therapies are often short-lived, because tumor cells escape the effects of therapy via rewired growth signaling, or due to expansion of small subpopulations of intrinsically drug resistant cells. Our mechanistic understanding of these processes is lacking, because the early events occur in small cryptic cell populations, and the escape is typically observed much later.

Our research focuses on cancer cell growth regulation, and aims to find prognostic and predictive markers for targeted therapy in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and identify mechanisms that enable the melanoma cells to escape the effects of targeted therapy. Central goal of this project is to develop novel mass spectrometry –based single-cell techniques in Turku Proteomics facility in order to characterize the drug resistant cancer cell subpopulations with unprecedented resolution.