Biography

Doctor Ponce is currently staff member at the Medical Oncology Department at “12 de Octubre” University Hospital and principal investigator at Thoracic Cancer and Early Drug Development Unit, which tackles the challenges posed by thoracic malignancies, including lung cancer, mesothelioma and thymic malignancies. This Unit is lead by Dr. Paz-Ares well international reference in thoracic malignancies.  
 
We concentrate on disease prevention, early detection and more precise techniques in diagnosis and staging towards advancing personalized medicine in oncology. Our group also focuses on targeted therapies in patients with specific molecular alterations, and is dedicated to both unmasking molecular mechanisms of acquired resistance and optimizing novel immunotherapy strategies.  
 
Personalized therapy for patients with advanced lung cancer is now the standard approach. We therefore aim to widely establish molecular determinants to better match therapies to the specificities of individual patients, not only in tumors but also in circulating-free DNA (liquid biopsy). Novel immunotherapy strategies have a role in the treatment algorithm for the management of thoracic tumors including malignant mesothelioma and small cell lung cancer; a number of protocols are now ongoing in our unit.