A European Consortium, led by the biotech company Argon Pharma in Barcelona, will develop new orally administered antitumor drugs for concrete indications which are not covered, especially in orphan oncological disorders such as pancreas cancer, and with a high prevalence, such as colorectal cancer. The CIBBIM- Nanomedicine Drug Delivery and Targeting research group at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR), led by Dr. Simó Schwartz, will collaborate assessing the therapeutic effectiveness of ARGON’s antitumor candidates in cancer stem cell models in order to prevent distant metastasis. The project, called “ "http://www.eurotransbio.eu/lw_resource/datapool/_items/item_25/etb_2012_30.pdf" WispATDrug”, will be developed in an international consortium in which participate four more companies from Germany and Finland. In the next three years, they will work with the aim to obtain new drugs with a better toxicity profile, a more convenient dosing and an improved formula to increase the quality of life of patients and their well-being during and after the treatment. The strategic approach of the project is to design new drugs capable to inhibit a concrete mechanism of action, associated to carcinogenic processes and advanced metastatic cancers. The inhibition of this cancer mechanism of action induces apoptosis which causes the death of cancer cells, but leave healthy cells intact.“This approach could help partners to find pharmaceutical companies which are committed to share the cost of preclinical and clinical trials, and to get agreements for the future commercial exploitation in different markets”, general director of Argon Pharma, Ramón Roca, reported. WispATDrug will be funded with 1,507,000€ from the EURA-NET program of the European Commission.