Policías x Valientes has made a €30,000 donation to the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) to promote research into paediatric brain tumours. This is the first contribution from the FaViAl grant, an initiative launched by the Terrassa Municipal Police, with a commitment to repeat the donation for three consecutive years to support childhood cancer research. Policías x Valientes collaborates with the 8.000 Estels de l’Ànnia project, joining forces to support childhood cancer research.

Since 2017, the Terrassa Municipal Police has been promoting various charitable campaigns and activities as part of Policías x Valientes to raise awareness of childhood cancer and raise funds for research. These initiatives include the sale of charity calendars and the charity head-shaving event held every September in Terrassa.

The initiative aims to contribute to advancing research into paediatric solid brain tumours, a rare type of cancer that can significantly affect the physical, cognitive, social, family, economic and emotional development of the children who suffer from it. To this end, they are promoting the FaViAl grant, inspired by Fabri, Víctor and Alex, three children who have experienced the impact of childhood cancer at close hand and who have become an example of resilience.

“At Policías x Valientes, on behalf of the Terrassa Municipal Police, we work from a position of empathy towards one of the most vulnerable sectors of the population, children, especially when a situation related to illness disrupts their life plans,” explains Mariangels de Antonio, co-director of the Terrassa Municipal Police’s charitable campaigns.

“Families are calling for public research into childhood cancer, and our objective is to raise awareness of this need among the population at large and to involve citizens in this project, which defines the community-support dimension of the force. Vall d’Hebron, as a European benchmark in public research in the field of childhood cancer, represents the ideal profile for allocating the resources obtained through donations,” adds Toni Villar, co-director of the Terrassa Municipal Police’s charitable campaigns.

A doctoral thesis to seek new therapeutic options for children

On this occasion, the FaViAl grant will be used to fund the doctoral thesis of María Gallego, a predoctoral researcher in the Childhood Cancer and Haematological Diseases group at VHIR.

Central nervous system tumours are the most common solid tumours in childhood and one of the main causes of cancer-related mortality and long-term effects at this stage of life. Despite advances in surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, these treatments remain insufficient for some of the most aggressive subtypes, such as diffuse midline glioma H3.3K27M (DMG) and posterior fossa group A ependymoma (PFA). In addition, current treatments can leave significant cognitive and neurological effects in children who overcome the disease. “For these reasons, it is important to develop new therapeutic strategies that are more effective and safer for patients,” explains Dr. Miquel Segura, co-head of the Childhood Cancer and Haematological Diseases group at VHIR.

Gallego’s doctoral thesis aims to identify and evaluate new treatment options for these two tumours, combining research into new therapeutic targets with the preclinical study of potential drugs. “Thanks to the FaViAl grant, we want to identify more precise therapies in order to improve the survival and quality of life of affected children,” adds Gallego.

One of the project’s main lines of research involves expanding and improving the experimental models* available using patient samples. 3D models (spheroids) are currently being developed from two PFA ependymoma cell lines and their corresponding animal models. At the same time, work is under way to generate new models directly from samples from Vall d’Hebron patients, in order to reproduce the characteristics of these tumours more faithfully.

The project also uses bioinformatics tools and membrane protein analysis to identify new therapeutic targets on the surface of tumour cells, which could pave the way for future immunotherapies specifically directed against the tumour.

Finally, new compounds capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and reaching the brain are being studied. These compounds are evaluated in H3.3K27M glioma models to determine their efficacy, understand their mechanism of action and assess their potential as future treatments.

*Institutional statement on the use of research animals