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WHAT WE FUND

Immunotherapy side effects

Cancer

At a glance

Learning from toxicity caused by cancer treatment to improve outcomes for patients of the future

Lead researcher

Dr Claire Palles

Institution

University of Birmingham

Status

Awarded and preparing to start

Amount awarded

£431,082.00

Last updated

04/06/26

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Claire Palles Dr Claire Palles

A new test to identify an individual’s risk of immunotherapy side effects

Dr Claire Palles is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a type of immunotherapy which boost the immune system to recognise and kill cancer cells. Although they have dramatically improved survival rates for people with cancer, they don’t work for everyone and commonly cause serious side effects which resemble the symptoms of autoimmune diseases.

Dr Claire Palles and her team have collected blood samples and health data from around 3,000 patients being treated with ICIs over the past five years. With this, they aim to develop a test which would be taken by the patient before treatment begins to help determine how likely they are to benefit, or experience serious side effects, from ICIs.