On February 3, the results of the 2019 call for the European program ‘Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions – Individual Fellowships’ (MSCA IF) were published. The objective of this initiative is to promote the mobility and innovation of the intellectual capital of Europe. It has therefore a budget (this edition, €296.49 million) aimed at subsidizing the training and hiring of experienced researchers, who will carry out individual projects between one and three years long.

The Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) will benefit from this opportunity and will host two of these projects:

• On the one hand, Dra. Rana El Bizri’s project (RegARcis) will study the role of the SWI/SNF complex in the Androgen Receptor cistrome regulation. The research will take place within the Resistance and progression mechanisms in prostate cancer Group, led by Dr. Álvaro Aytes.
• On the other hand, Dr. Noemí González will undertake the Organ-VIP project on developing genetically modified organoids for genetic variant interpretation in colorectal cancer, along with Dr. Laura Valle and her Hereditary Cancer Group.

In this MSCA IF 2019 call, Spain has positioned itself as the country of the European Union with more funded projects, receiving a total of €30.5 million. These funds will allow the hiring of almost 200 scientists in Spanish centers, whose add up to the more than 7,830 projects currently in development thanks to these grants, 861 of them in Spanish institutions.