Stress and cancer

Excessive stress can cause dysregulation of stress hormones. Dysregulated levels of glucocorticoids (stress hormones) can have detrimental effects on cancer progression. In certain types of glioma, the second common type of cancer in children, high amounts of glucocorticoids drastically reduce survival. In triple negative breast cancer they can escalate metastasis, whereas in other types of cancer (e.g. lung cancer) they can induce resistance to standard treatment options. Life with a cancer diagnosis itself psychologically burdens individuals with extraordinary amounts of stress boosting heightened stress hormone levels. But also Glucocorticoid treatment is often required to manage the systemwide inflammation due to chemotherapy or to avoid oedema upon radiation therapy in glioma treatment.
Funded by an SNF project grant the Gapp lab joined forces with the Bentires-Alj lab (Uni Basel) the Meijer lab (Uni Leiden) the Schürle lab (ETHZ) and the Carreira lab (ETHZ) and studies the mechanisms underlying these negative consequences to put forward novel treatment approaches (e.g. based on custom made protein depletion tools) that can harness our findings.