InFLAMES group leader, Docent Carlos Rogerio Figueiredo, has received the Young Investigator Award from the Scandinavian Society for Immunology. The award was announced at the European Congress of Immunology in Dublin on 3 September.

The Young Investigator Award of the Scandinavian Society for Immunology is awarded for high quality immunological research and promotion of the field of immunology.

Carlos Rogerio Figueiredo is an Academy Research Fellow of the Research Council of Finland. He leads the Medical Immuno-Oncology Group (MIORG) at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Turku, which is also affiliated with the Turku Bioscience Centre. Figueiredo and his research group are studying how cancer evades the human immune system, making the disease resistant to immunotherapies.

Figueiredo is developing methods to predict which patients are unlikely to respond to immunotherapies and to identify those who will benefit from them. The new prognostic tools that will emerge from the research could help doctors make decisions when selecting patients for immunotherapies.

Figueiredo’s research group will also study the mechanisms of cancer resistance and develop new rational combination therapies to overcome resistance. The aim is to find alternative treatments that can benefit all cancer patients.

Figueiredo will receive the award next year at the Scandinavian Society for Immunology conference in Stockholm, where he will also be invited to give a lecture.