The Age of Immunotherapy: Training the Immune System to Fight Cancer

Cancer is often seen as a disease of uncontrolled cell growth, but it doesn’t act alone. In this talk, we will explore how tumors interact with the nervous system, forming surprising connections that can influence how cancer grows, spreads, and even evades treatment. Far from being passive bystanders, nerves can actively shape the tumor environment, sending signals that cancer cells can hijack to their advantage. We will take a journey into this hidden dialogue between cancer and the nervous system, uncovering how scientists discovered these interactions and why they matter. By better understanding this unexpected alliance, researchers are rethinking cancer not just as a mass of rogue cells but as part of a complex neural network, opening the door to new and potentially more effective therapeutic strategies.

HPV is preventable by vaccines, but this does not help all the people who are already infected with HPV - which is 12% of all people - who lives with the risk of getting cancer. Also, HPV not only causes cervical cancer, but also other genital cancers and head-neck cancer, which are not caught early through screening. Therefore, HPV will continue to be a problem for many decades to come, and better treatments are needed. I will take you through the status quo for HPV treatment, and present a new and promising drug type: therapeutic vaccines - vaccines that do not prevent disease, but use the immune system to fight disease from within.

The success of cancer immunotherapy often depends on how well the immune system can identify a tumor and stay active and functional long enough to eliminate it. Even potent drugs designed to leverage immune cells can face significant obstacles when tumors adapt to the pressure of a sustained attack. This survival is often driven by dynamic changes in the tumor environment, where the tumor rewires itself to create a protective barrier against the immune response. Identifying these adaptive mechanisms is essential for developing therapy combinations that can prevent escape and achieve a more durable treatment response.