Dr. Luis Montuenga obtains the I award of research of the Lung Ambition Alliance Spain.
The project, coordinated by the Cima in partnership with the Clínica Universidad de Navarra, studies new strategies to detect in a personalized way the risk of suffering lung cancer.
16 | 09 | 2021
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.
Every year, approximately 20,000 new cases of lung cancer are diagnosed in Spain, most of them in advanced stages. The award-winning study focuses on identifying new biomarkers that can detect the disease in combination with leave CT scans. “Specifically, in our laboratory Cima develop and validate highly sensitive protein signatures. We will also study the possibility of integrating state-of-the-art radiomics technology. Our goal to optimize lung cancer risk assessment and improve the performance of early detection via CT, which has already proven effective as tool lung cancer tool ,” explains Dr. Montuenga, project coordinator and Dean the School of Science at the University of Navarra and group leader group CIBER Cancer Research Center (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.