29/03/2012

The Board of Barcelona of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (aecc), has resolved to fund 6 research projects with 18.000 Euros each one. aecc call every year for bianual scholarships on oncology research. The purpose of the scholarships is to promote young researchers to be interested for the oncology as speciality to develop their research works in the treatment of the cancer.The funded researchers work for institutions and centers of reference and with capacity for the scientific research at Barcelona. The quality of the scientific projects funded is basic to get a real impact for the prevention and treatment of the oncology disease in all its ways. For aecc, the investigation is the most effective way for the improvement of the diagnostics and the treatment of cancer. The Commission of experts in Oncology will evaluate and analyze the researchers and their projects, throughout two years of commitment of the scholarships. The ceremony in which researchers received the scholarships took place On March 28, 2012, in the "42nd Meeting of Partners and Annual Convention" of the aecc Board of Barcelona.One of the researchers funded is Dr. Andreas Doll, member of the research unit in biomedicine and translational and pediatrics oncology at Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) for the project "MicroRNA (miRNA) profiles as predictors of clinical outcome and therapy decision making in prostate cancer”. Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among men from developed countries. Using current risk stratification strategies, it is still difficult to separate patients with rapidly progressing tumours, which require aggressive treatment, from those with indolent tumours. For this reason, it is a priority to search for markers that are specifically linked to PCa, predicting its behaviour with better reliability than the current criteria presently defining risk. The result would enable more effective treatment decisions for individuals (personalized medicine) and would be of great utility in aiding clinical management of a large patient population.The aim of the current project is to identify miRNA signatures that closely correlate with PCa risk and clinical outcome. Our overall goal by the end of the grant period is to better predict aggressive prostate cancer by identifying clinical biomarkers that ultimately enhance treatment decisions. The use of FFPE tissues and urine as a starting material is attractive because this approach should make biomarkers identified in this way much easier to translate into widespread clinical practice. Finally, the detection of aggressive PCa at an earlier stage will improve PCa prognosis, which will, in turn, help to reduce health care costs.