LIH Awarded ERC Grant for Cancer Research Project

On Thursday 4 September 2025, the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) announced that its Translational Cancer Immunogenomics (TCI) group has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant.

The funding will support IMMUNAGENOMICS, a five-year project which, according to LIH, will explore how ageing and genetic variation influence immune responses in metastatic brain tumours and focus on decoding the complex relationship between these factors and the tumour immune microenvironment to improve personalised cancer therapies.

LIH noted that the project addresses “a critical unmet need in oncology” and aims to improve patient outcomes through personalised immunotherapeutic approaches. Cancer remains a major health burden, with nearly three million new diagnoses in Europe in 2022. Among the most lethal complications is the spread of tumours to the brain, known as brain metastases (BrM), which affect up to 40% of all cancer patients and often lead to poor prognoses. Despite recent breakthroughs in immunotherapy, many BrM patients still fail to respond to treatment due to the complex nature of the disease.

The TCI group at LIH will address this challenge through the newly awarded ERC Starting Grant, which will fund the IMMUNAGENOMICS project. Under the leadership of Dr Ángel Álvarez-Prado, the team will investigate how ageing and genetic variation influence the immune microenvironment of BrM tumours and the efficacy of radio- and immunotherapies.

Dr Ángel Álvarez-Prado explained: “IMMUNAGENOMICS offers a unique opportunity to bring together advanced genomics, immunology and cancer biology to decipher how the immune system responds to brain metastases across different genetic and age backgrounds. Our aim is to uncover insights that can directly inform the development of more precise and effective therapies for patients with these aggressive tumours.”

According to the institute, through a combination of genetic models, “cutting-edge technologies such as single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics”, as well as analyses of human BrM tissue samples, the TCI group will generate a detailed view of the tumour immune microenvironment and its evolution during treatment. LIH noted that IMMUNAGENOMICS aims to “lay the foundation for a new era of personalised medicine in oncology.”

The institute added that the ERC Starting Grant “not only recognises the scientific excellence of the TCI group, but also reinforces the role of LIH at the forefront of cancer immunology and translational research in Europe.”