Dr. Jose Ernesto Cortes Lopez

BSc degree in Biology at the City University of New York (2012), MSc in Bioengineering (2014) at Bioengineering Dpt. Imperial College London, and PhD (2019) at the same institution. 

During my graduated studies, my research focused on elucidating signalling pathways to reprogram the tumour microenvironment in pancreatic and liver cancers. These projects identified two molecular mechanisms by which the retinoic acid receptor beta (RAR-beta) and G protein coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) act as fundamental targets to regulate the activation of the main resident cells in the tumour microenvironment, myofibroblasts using all trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) and tamoxifen to target RAR-beta and GPER, respectively. In both cases, myofibroblasts were reprogrammed and their tumour promoting capacities were inhibited. ATRA and tamoxifen have well-established records in clinics and have been used to treat leukaemia and breast cancer, respectively. These results open the possibility of repositioning ATRA and tamoxifen as stromal therapies for pancreatic and liver cancers, and possibly other solid tumours. ATRA is undergoing phase II clinical trials in pancreatic cancer patients in the UK. The importance of the pre-clinical discovery that ATRA and tamoxifen can act as novel microenvironmental-targeted therapies is that by redeploying these already approved drugs for the treatment of cancer will bypass the lengthy and costly testing associated with de novo drug discovery.