The Provincial Board of Barcelona of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) – Catalonia Against Cancer has granted a Research grant in oncology to Dr. Ernest Nadal to carry out the project entitled “Study of predictive factors of primary and acquired resistance to first-line immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer”. The grant was officially awarded during the AECC Board of Trustees’ joint gala held in Barcelona. These grants amount to 35,000 euros.

Dr. Nadal is a medical oncologist at the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) and the main investigator of the CReST research group at IDIBELL. His project will study the expression of specific tumor genes and also blood levels of cytokines (molecules associated with inflammation and mobilization of inflammatory cells) and blood cell populations in patients with advanced lung cancer who receive immunotherapy as first-line tratment. This project aims to move towards more accurate and effective immunotherapy and to understand why some patients do not benefit from this treatment and also how the tumor acquires resistance to treatment.

At the same time, the AECC Foundation has also awarded the researcher Samuel Gonçalves – member of the group led by Dr. Alberto Villanueva at IDIBELL-ICO –  a postdoctoral research grant for the project “Generation of personal derived orthotopic bladder cancer as advanced preclinical tumor patients treatment”.

The research project of Dr. Gonçalves, which will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Javier Garcia del Muro, bladder cancer clinical specialist at ICO, focuses on the generation of advanced models (orthoxenographs) of bladder cancer that is resistant to cisplatin therapy and immunotherapy.