Every year, around one million people worldwide are diagnosed with liver cell cancer, also known as hepatocellular carcinoma. These tumors are highly aggressive, with a five-year survival rate of less than ten percent. One reason for this is that current treatments are only effective to a limited extent.

In his Venture Fellowship project, Nicolas Melin, previously Postdoc at the Department of Visceral Surgery and Medicine at the Inselspital University Hospital Bern and the University of Bern, is developing a new therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma. This new precision therapy aims to significantly enhance the effectiveness of highly burdensome immunotherapies, and thereby improve the chances of survival of patients.