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Raúl Méndez, ICREA researcher at IRB Barcelona, coordinates a 5-year project in collaboration with IDIBAPS and the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. Photo: IRB.
 23.09.2015

The AECC awards 1.2 million euros to liver cancer research at IRB Barcelona

This year the Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC) is granting 6.7 million euros to fund four cutting-edge research projects. These funds will be presented in an official ceremony to be held in Burgos on 23 September. The recipients include ICREA researcher Rául Méndez, from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), who will coordinate a 5-year project on hepatocellular carcinoma. The AECC has also awarded a postdoctoral fellowship to Isabel García Cao to study colon cancer resistance to treatment.

 

Headed by Dr. Méndez and in collaboration with Dr. Mercedes Fernández, from the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), and Dr. Jordi Bruix, from the Fundació Clínic per a la Recerca Biomèdica (FCRB), the team seeks to identify new ways to treat hepatocellular carcinoma, the main type of liver cancer and the third cause of death by cancer worldwide, with a patient survival rate of less than 10% five years after diagnosis. This basic clinical research project aims to determine the involvement of CPEB proteins in the development and progression of the disease. One of the goals of the project is to identify compounds with the capacity to modulate CPEB activity and thus with potential clinical applications.

In the same ceremony, the AECC will present 8 postdoctoral fellowships worth 135,000€ each to outstanding young researchers, among them Isabel García Cao from IRB Barcelona. Dr. García Cao will focus her study on colon cancer resistance to chemotherapy. The project aims to analyse tumour cell response to genotoxic stress when subjected to various kinds of chemotherapeutic agents combined with inhibitors of key protein kinases, namely p38 MAPK, and ATM. The team will study the efficacy of this combined treatment on tumour cells with distinct genetic profiles.