Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation awards over €1 million for research on cancer drug resistance
Daniela Ungureanu’s research focuses on cancer drug resistance, one of the most critical challenges in cancer treatment. Despite major advances in therapies in recent years, cancer often recurs as some cancer cells develop resistance to the drugs used.
The project develops and applies a novel single-cell analysis method that enables a more precise examination of how individual cancer cells respond to drugs. The method is based on single-cell RNA sequencing and makes it possible to identify rare, treatment-resistant cells that often remain undetected in conventional analyses based on large cell populations.
This new approach allows large-scale studies even from small sample sizes, such as patient biopsies. It opens up new possibilities for more personalised cancer treatment and more accurate targeting of drug therapies.
"The reason so many cancers become incurable is that a small subset of cells survives treatment and drives relapse. With this support from the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, we can now identify and characterize those rare resistant cells directly from patient biopsies — at scale and with a precision that wasn't feasible until recently. I hope this work will meaningfully change how we match patients to therapies and when we intervene," Ungureanu explains.
The research combines drug screening, single-cell analyses and AI-based methods. The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of how drug resistance develops and how it can be prevented.
The results of the project are expected to advance the development of new, more effective cancer treatments and improve the long-term outcomes of targeted therapies. The research may also help identify new drug candidates and treatment strategies for different types of cancer.
The Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation awarded a total of €8.3 million in grants to 12 projects in the fields of medicine, art and culture. The funding was awarded to 11.7% of applicants.