Dr. Luis Montuenga, researcher senior at Cima University of Navarra, has been awarded the I award de research of the Lung Ambition Alliance Spain. The project, coordinated by the Cima in partnership with the Clínica Universidad de NavarraThe project is studying new strategies to detect the risk of lung cancer in a personalized way.

About 20,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year in Spain, most of them in advanced stages. The award-winning study focuses on finding new biomarkers that detect the disease in combination with radiological analysis by CT of leave doses. "Specifically, in our laboratory at Cima we will develop and validate highly sensitive protein signatures. We will also study the possibility of associating state-of-the-art radiomic technology. Our goal is to optimize the determination of lung cancer risk and also to improve the performance of the early detection technique by CT, which has already been shown to be effective as a screening tool for lung cancer," explains Dr. Montuenga, coordinator of project, Dean of the School of Sciences of the University of Navarra and head of group of the CIBER of Cancer (CIBERONC).

The Clínica Universidad de Navarra has more than 20 years of experience in lung cancer screening using leave dose CT, thanks to its participation in the international consortium of research I-ELCAP. So far, more than 4,000 people at high risk of lung cancer have been included in the program and more than 100 asymptomatic tumors have been detected very early. Dr. Gorka Bastarrika, director of department of Radiology, will lead the part of the study assigned to Clínica Universidad de Navarra.

The project granted by the Lung Ambition Alliance Spain, endowed with 60,000 euros per year, will be developed over the next three years.

Doubling five-year survival

The Lung Ambition Alliance is an international initiative created with the aim of doubling five-year survival in lung cancer by 2025, goal . It is a program driven by four international organizations, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), Guardant Health, Global Lung Cancer Coalition (GLCC) and AstraZeneca, in partnership with other national and international entities.

The submission of the award to Dr. Montuenga was held at framework of the scientific meeting "Together we build a future for lung cancer patients", in which health experts, scientific societies, patient associations and institutional representatives highlighted the need for innovation and research to implement a screening system in our country as a strategy for the early detection of lung cancer.