The association Mi Compañero de Viaje, led by Andrea, Sara, and Marta, offers support to young people with cancer and works to raise awareness about the disease and raise funds for oncological research. Mi Compañero de Viaje has been collaborating with the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) since 2015 with a total of €154,778 allocated to childhood and adolescent cancer research.

Andrea and Mireia gave shape to this initiative, as they themselves had to overcome cancer. This was the reason that led them to create this association: the will to offer any young person who found themselves in the same situation they did support and the ability to share their concerns, among others. They managed to make it a reality and offer the help they would have liked to receive during their oncological process. Since then, Mi Compañero de Viaje has raised funds to finance research projects at VHIR.

"More than 10 years ago, the entity has been committed to childhood cancer research alongside Vall d'Hebron. Everything we have been able to contribute up to today is the result of the solidarity of many people and entities who have believed in the cause and have wanted to contribute their grain of sand. We are very grateful to each of them, as well as to Dr. Roma and his entire team for continuing to fight day after day to advance the research of this disease," says Andrea Martí, president and co-founder of Mi Compañero de Viaje.

This year, they made a donation of €19,197, aimed at the project led by Dr. Josep Roma, principal investigator of the Cancer and Hematological Diseases Group for Children. The team is working on the preclinical development of a new treatment to improve survival rates and quality of life for patients with rhabdomyosarcoma, a highly malignant type of childhood tumor.

“Mi Compañero de Viaje has been a constant help in the path of our research to develop new therapies to fight childhood cancer and sarcomas in particular. It is an association that has been very active and has helped us a lot to carry out our research during all these years,” explains Dr. Roma. “I thank them for their collaboration, both to its members and the extensive network of collaborators who have allowed us to get this far,” he adds.

Advances in the research group

The experience of the group in recent years has allowed them to identify new molecular targets very close to the clinical phase. At this stage, collaborations have been consolidated with the biotechnology industry for the development of small molecules that inhibit pro-oncogenic processes such as invasion or proliferation. The goal is to provide patients with innovative and more specific therapies based on biological evidence.