This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
The road to curing cancer begins in laboratories like those of these seven young researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). To commemorate World Cancer Day, we asked them to explain how they try to understand the origin of various tumors and improve their treatment; how they study altered proteins in cancer; why biobanks are so important; and how to encourage research results to benefit patients. On Instagram, their full interviews.
Pablo Blanco. Clinical Research Program
He studies the role of the cells’ “sense of touch”, called mechanoreception, in glioblastoma multiforme, a very aggressive type of brain tumor. His ultimate goal would be “to be able to develop a drug that could eventually become an effective treatment”.
Inma San Clemente. Molecular Oncology Program
In the fourth year of her doctoral thesis, she is working in the chromosome dynamics laboratory studying Ewing’s sarcoma, a bone cancer that mainly affects children. It currently has no specific treatment. “I study the involvement of a protein – cohesin – in the metastatic forms of Ewing sarcoma, which have the worst prognosis” he says.
Daniel Alba. Biobank
“A biobank is a repository of biological samples for research (…). It is important because it allows researchers to have easy access to the samples, it ensures that these samples meet ethical-legal criteria and are of high quality, so that the research carried out with them is also both of high quality and reliable,” he says.
María I. Daudén. Structural Biology Program
Her working tool is “an electron microscope. It is like a light microscope, but instead of irradiating with light, we irradiate with electrons, which allows us to see much smaller samples, such as proteins,” she explains. She is working on a basic research project in which she is studying “proteins related to various types of cancer (breast, ovarian, prostate, etc.). However, it is not very well-known which mechanism link the malfunctioning of these proteins to cancer.”
Guillermo Garaulet. Biotechnology Program
In the Molecular Imaging Unit “I am analyzing the results of an experiment in which nanoparticles have been injected. We wanted to see specifically which organs we were able to reach with these nanoparticles,” he explains. “We can do this very quickly using real-time imaging techniques.”
In the Molecular Imaging Unit “I am analyzing the results of an experiment in which nanoparticles have been injected. We wanted to see specifically which organs we were able to reach with these nanoparticles,” he explains. “We can do this very quickly using real-time imaging techniques.”
Carlos Valdivia. Human Cancer Genetics Program
For his doctoral thesis, he is working on “the most frequent type of renal cancer. We are studying different mutations related to it, which are important because they modify how the tumor behaves and also how the treatment of patients can change depending on whether those genes are mutated or not”.
Marta San Martín. Experimental Therapies Program
“The Experimental Therapies program consists of a chemistry section and a biology section. The medical chemists synthesize and improve new compounds, new molecules which will try to fight cancer.
In the biology section, where I work, we test in human cells and in mice these compounds that have been designed by our colleagues. We are trying to see if these drugs really work”.