This morning the AECC has held an institutional act in Barcelona chaired by Her Majesty the Queen, honorary president of the AECC and its scientific foundation, who has presented a total of 7.9 million euros to 34 researchers (22 projects).<\/p>\n
\nIRB Barcelona projects<\/strong><\/p>\n Carles Barcel\u00f3\u00a0is a scientist in the Colorectal Cancer Laboratory, headed by ICREA researcher\u00a0Eduard Batlle. Barcel\u00f3\u2019s project focuses on studying the colon cancer stem cells responsible for the initiation and progression of the tumour. His research line seeks to identify new mechanisms of tumour stem cells under the specific control of given oncogenes and thereby allow researchers to design therapies aimed to interfere with tumour development.<\/p>\n Jelena Urosevic\u00a0works in the Cancer Growth and Metastasis Laboratory, run\u00a0 by ICREA researcherRoger Gomis. Urosevic concentrates on the metastases caused by colon cancer in the liver and lung. The project seeks to identify, within a family of proteins called phosphatases, those that are regulated by the metastatic process in colon cancer.<\/p>\n Colon cancer is the third most common cancer in men and the second in women worldwide. Spain reports 32,000 new cases each year, thus making this disease the most common in this country. The 5-year survival rate is currently 64%.<\/p>\n Many of the current therapeutic strategies are effective in eliminating the primary tumour; however, 50% of the patients develop another tumour, which is resistant to conventional treatment.\u00a0Barcel\u00f3 says\u00a0\u201cin my project we attempt to elucidate how mutations in a tumour modulate the activity of the stem cells that generate the tumour\u201d. The objective is to discover how certain drugs targeted to oncogenes act directly on stem cells to remove them.<\/p>\n Jelena Urosevic\u00a0explains that most colon cancer deaths are caused by metastases in vital organs such as the liver and lung. \u201cThe objectives of the project include better understanding the metastatic process, identifying new therapeutic targets and searching for compounds that can trigger metastatic cell death\u201d.<\/p>\n \nThe project of IBMB-CSIC and\u00a0the FBG<\/strong><\/p>\n The project on neuroblastoma led by Elisa Mart\u00ed Gorostiza, a researcher at IBMB CSIC and the Catalan Biotechnology Reference Network (XRB), has received one of the three grants for research projects on childhood cancer funded by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC). The \u20ac 150,000 grant, obtained with the collaboration of the XRB, will be managed by the FBG.<\/p>\n Neuroblastoma is the most common childhood cancer during the first year of infancy and presents a low cure rate (below 40%) in high-risk cases. It originates in the transient embryonic cells of the neural crest, and its clinical course is unique and enigmatic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Research has led the team of Elisa Mart\u00ed to identify Neurexophilin-1 (NXPH1), a protein secreted by the neuroblastoma that shows a very distinct behaviour depending on the risk category of the cancer and the type of neural crest cells (migratory or non-migratory). Thanks to the grant from the AECC, the team at the IBMB-CSIC will study the protein’s expression in neuroblastoma stem cells in order to design specific strategies to improve diagnosis, and search for more effective treatments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jelena Urosevic and Carles Barcel\u00f3, postdoctoral fellows at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona<\/a>), and\u00a0Elisa Mart\u00ed Gorostiza,\u00a0researcher at the\u00a0Institut de Biologia Molecular de Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC<\/a>)\u00a0\u2013both located at the\u00a0Barcelona Science Park\u2013\u00a0\u00a0have officially been presented\u00a0with funding over 5 years from the\u00a0Asociaci\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola Contra el C\u00e1ncer\u00a0(AECC<\/a>) for their respective research projects on cancer.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n