The Ramón Areces Foundation will finance two new cancer projects of research of the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra. In this way it reinforces its support to the Navarra center with which it already collaborates in other projects on oncological, cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

Over the next three years, ten researchers from CIMA will work on these projects led by Dr. Juan José Lasarte and Dr. Fernando Pastor. The project led by Dr. Lasarte aims to develop a new alternative immunotherapy for patients without effective treatment. Specifically, "the research consists of genetically modifying T lymphocytes, cells of the immune system capable of recognizing tumor cells and eliminating them, to provide them with a greater proliferative and antitumor capacity to enhance their activity even in a hostile environment such as that found in tumors," explains the researcher. "The results of this project may lay the groundwork instructions for new strategies to improve the effectiveness of adoptive cell therapy based on T lymphocytes. This technique is based on extracting T lymphocytes from a patient and culturing them at laboratory to increase their issue and their antitumor properties so that, when introduced back to the patient, they can fight cancer."

The project led by Dr. Pastor proposes to investigate a novel therapeutic strategy to discover the specific characteristics of each tumor and how to enable the immune system to fight it. According to the expert, "the strategy seeks to unmask a significant number of tumor neoantigens that underlie each tumor subject , allowing the immune system to recognize the tumor as a potent threat and destroy it".

The ceremony of submission of the grants will be held tomorrow, the 2nd, in Madrid. In this call the total funding allocated to the projects of the CIMA is 190,000 euros. The works were chosen from among the 631 proposals submitted to the 18th National Competition for Grants to the research in its section dedicated to Life Sciences and the subject. With this biannual award, the Ramón Areces Foundation "aims to contribute to consolidating a solid scientific and technological structure in our country," says the institution. One of the objectives of these grants is to support young researchers. Likewise, the Foundation grants the authors the intellectual or industrial property rights that may arise from the execution of each project.