The Spanish Association Against Cancer and the Association’s Scientific Foundation held on 15 February at the Madrid headquarters, coinciding with International Childhood Cancer Day, the presentation and award ceremony for the AECC Grants in Cancer Research 2023, to be developed in centres in the Community of Madrid.
In total, the AECC Cancer Research Grants for 2023 reached 29.4 million euros for 233 grants, which aim to increase the survival of people with cancer, transferring the results of the research to the patient.
During this event, the researchers who received grants received their diploma and the selected projects were announced, including the project coordinated by Dr. Manuel Valiente (Coordinated Projects Grant 2023), which will be developed jointly with María Jesús Artiga (CNIO Biobank), Fátima Al-Shahrour (CNIO Bionformatics Unit), Ángel Pérez (Hospital 12 de Octubre Neurosurgery Unit), and Víctor Manuel Pérez (Mathematical Oncology Laboratory (MOLAB) at the UCML), to challenge the pillars underlying the poor prognosis of brain metastases, through more efficient approaches to reach specific clinically-relevant goals applicable to cancer patients.
Current efforts against cancer take too long to be translated to patients. This is especially relevant in cases such as brain metastasis (BrM), which is associated with poor survival and prognosis. Part of the underlying problem is the limited connection between basic research and clinical teams, and thus the lack of coordination between the generation of new knowledge and its use to explore vulnerabilities that contributes to improve the clinical practice, either on diagnosis or on treatments, in this scenario.
The work proposed in this grant, guided by a strong scientific rationale, aims to challenge the three pillars underlying the poor prognosis of brain metastases: high lethality, resistance to therapy, and the impact in neurocognition; by using a unique and novel working strategy based on the National Brain Metastasis Network (RENACER), offering novel findings and aiming to translate some of them into patients within the five years of the proposal.
During this event, a round table focused on cancer research was held, with the participation of Dr. Manuel Valiente, head of the Brain Metastasis Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), co-founder and scientific director of the National Brain Metastasis Network (RENACER), Marta Herrero, predoctoral researcher at the Department of Immunology, Ophthalmology and ENT at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Dr. Cristian Suárez, Postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular and Translational Oncology Unit of the CIEMAT-Imas12 Biomedical Innovation Department (Ciberonc), and Dr. Ana Ortega, head of the Metabolism in Cancer and Ageing group at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Centre in Madrid.
