#IDIBELLconnect: Novel clinical and translational research approaches to mesothelioma, an orphan tumor

Mesothelioma is a rare and aggressive tumor with dismal prognosis arising in the pleura and associated with asbestos exposure. Its incidence is on the rise worldwide. In patients with advanced MPM, chemotherapy is the standard of care. Currently, no standard salvage therapy has been approved in the last decades. Novel therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. During the seminar, I will give an overview on the lines of research that are currently ongoing in our group consisting on i) Characterization of the immune TME of mesothelioma to unravel novel immunotherapeutic approaches and identify potential biomarkers; ii) Assessment of the antitumor activity of CDK4/6 inhibitors in preclinical models of mesothelioma; iii) Testing of germline and somatic alterations in a prospective cohort of mesothelioma patients. The clinical trials conducted in mesothelioma at IDIBELL will be discussed.

Ernest Nadal graduated in Medicine in 2001 at the University of Valencia (Spain) and completed his training in Medical Oncology in 2006 at the Catalan Institute of Oncology (Barcelona, Spain). In 2008 he obtained a Rio Hortega Scholarship which allowed him to continue his training in translational research at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, US).  He returned to the Catalan Institute of Oncology in 2014 where he leads the research in Thoracic Tumors and is the group leader of the CReST research group at IDIBELL. He is Associate Professor of Oncology since 2019 at the University of Barcelona.

The main research interests are the development of clinical trials in special populations of patients with thoracic malignancies, the study of novel therapeutic strategies in malignant pleural mesothelioma, the characterization of the immune contexture of brain metastases and the implementation of genomic on cancer patients, especially in those with thoracic malignancies. He published more than 60 papers including papers in high impact journals in the field of oncology or cancer biology (H-index 25, Google Scholar).