Researchers Neus Martínez, from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), and Pilar Navarro, from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute (IIBB-CSIC), received the Vanguardia de la Ciencia award last night in a ceremony that took place in La Pedrera.
The work of these scientists, which identified a biomarker in the blood that makes it possible to predict the presence of pancreatic cancer before the symptoms appear, was the most voted for by the readers of La Vanguardia and the jury made up of experts as the scientific advance led by most important women of the year 2022 in Spain. The award reached its 12th edition in 2023 and is a joint initiative of La Vanguardia and the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera.
"Thanks to the visibility that winning the Vanguardia de la ciencia award has given us, we have been able to launch a study to validate our biomarker," announced Martínez and Navarro. They even explained shortly before beginning the act that they have received interest from a donor to continue financing their research.
The work, whose conclusions were published in the eBioMedicine journal, opens the door to improving the prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer. It is a rare but very aggressive type of tumor, the incidence of which is increasing, and which is expected to become the third leading cause of death from cancer in the coming years, after lung and colon tumors.
In this sense, Martínez and Navarro carried out a study with patients from the Hospital del Mar y Clínic, in Barcelona, and Ramón y Cajal, in Madrid, in which they were able to identify a biomarker, the soluble AXL protein. When it is in high amounts in the blood, it accurately predicts pancreatic cancer. Their results open the door to being able to detect this tumor at an earlier stage.
Martínez and Navarro received the award from the Minister for Research and Universities, Joaquim Nadal, who highlighted the excellent level of the Catalan research system, especially in basic research, which is "above the European average". The minister highlighted the importance, precisely, of the most basic science and the generation of knowledge as an essential pillar to be able to move on to applied research. “We cannot carry out transfer and applied research if we do not have solid knowledge”, he highlighted.
The president of the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera, Germán Ramón-Cortés, also agreed to value the excellence of the research carried out in Catalonia, both from hospitals, research centers and universities, "we must remember that among all of us we are contributing to make this world a little better”, he stated.
For his part, the director of La Vanguardia, Jordi Juan, stressed that the great success of the award is to value the work of the researchers and expressed hope that the commitment of La Vanguardia and the Fundació Catalunya-La Pedrera with this award also serves to inspire vocations in girls and young women. "Let them be encouraged, there is a future and they will be able to do many things," said Juan.
In addition to Navarro and Martínez, the other two finalists for the Vanguardia de la Ciencia awards also participated in the event: Inés Marín, a researcher at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute (IRB), and Cátia Monteiro, who was researching in the National Center for Oncological Research (CNIO) and currently a researcher at the pharmaceutical company MSD. They were also chosen in second and third position by the voters and jury of experts, who also shared the results of their scientific articles.
The biologist Inés Marín, a researcher at the Institut de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona (IRB), in second place, has discovered how to improve the efficiency of chemotherapy using senescent cells, cells that are damaged but do not die, but remain in a species zombie state, and that are very effective alerting the immune system to act on the tumor.
For her part, the Portuguese biologist Cátia Monteiro, who was the third most voted, has identified a biomarker that makes it possible to identify which patients with brain metastases will be resistant to radiotherapy, which is the most widely used treatment for these tumors. This makes it possible to identify patients who will respond and those who will not. And for the latter, the researcher has found a drug that makes them sensitive to radiotherapy again.
