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From left to right: Elías Campo, Iñaki Martín-Subero, Holger Heyn, and Ivo Gut in the evaluation of the BCLL@las project in Brussels (Photo: CNAG-CRG).
 23.10.2018

Researchers from CNAG-CRG and IDIBAPS receive a €8.3 million ERC Synergy Grant

The European Research Council (ERC) today announced the results of the 2018 ERC Synergy Grants Call. A project, the BCLL@las, of four research groups from the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) –based in the Barcelona Science Park and integrated into the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG)– and the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS) have received this prestigious grant to unravel the genomics and epigenomics of chronic lymphocytic leukemia – the most frequent adult leukemia in the Western world– at unprecedented resolution using single-cell analysis. 

 

Two research groups from the Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico (CNAG-CRG) of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) with expertise in genome sequencing technologies and single-cell genomics led by Ivo Gut and Holger Heyn, and two research groups from the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi I Sunyer (IDIBAPS) with expertise in cell biology, pathology and clinic led by Elias Campo and Iñaki Martin-Subero, have been awarded with an 8,3 M€ grant in 2018 ERC Synergy Grants Call. These researchers will develop the BCLL@tlas project, which aims at resolving the genomic and epigenomic hallmarks of chronic lymphocytic leukemia using single-cell analysis.

“We will be able to disentangle chronic lymphocytic leukemia with far greater resolution than ever before and generate comprehensive information from thousands of individual cells. This will undoubtedly lead to novel insights into the origin and evolution of cancer,” says Ivo Gut, director of the CNAG-CRG. “Our groups have been working together on chronic lymphocytic leukemia since 2009. We have come a long way in our understanding of the genomic features of this disease. Now, the ERC Synergy grant will allow us to take another huge step forward in the understanding of chronic lymphocytic leukemia development and progression by comprehensively studying it at single-cell resolution,” he concludes.

The aim of ERC Synergy Grants is to address ambitious research questions that can only be answered by the coordinated work of a small group of two to four principal investigators and their teams, bringing together their complementary skills, knowledge and resources. The ultimate goal of the scheme is to give support to a close collaborative interaction that will enable transformative research at the forefront of science, capable of yielding groundbreaking or even unpredictable scientific results and/or cross-fertilizing disciplines. 

The BCLL@las project is one of the three awarded projects in Spain in this call the only one in Catalonia. It is one of the 27 granted projects throughout Europe, among the 295 submitted proposals with a 9% success rate. 

► For further information: CNAG–CRG website [+]