Gonçalo Bernardes. / Laura M. Lombardía. CNIO.
Bernardes, who is joining the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), is an international leader in creating highly selective therapies against tumours to increase their effectiveness and reduce side effects.
He has authored more than 195 scientific publications and holds two dozen patents. His research has resulted in several spin-off companies in Portugal and the USA.
He receives funding for his research through the ATTRACT programme launched by the State Research Agency to attract research talent.
Portuguese researcher Gonçalo Bernardes, a professor at the University of Cambridge (UK), is joining CNIO as head of the new Translational Chemical Biology Group. The ultimate goal of his research is “to directly help design and discover new drugs with greater selectivity and efficacy in the treatment of cancer,” he says.
Bernardes receives funding for his research through the ATTRACT programme launched by the State Research Agency to attract prestigious researchers with experience abroad, created to promote “a more competitive Spanish System of Science, Technology and Innovation at national and international level” and which provides its researchers with one million euros in funding.
In 2023, Bernardes developed part of his research at CNIO within the Visiting Researchers programme run by Occident Foundation.
More effective against tumours with fewer side effects
Bernardes’ group is leading the international development of innovative strategies to develop precision cancer drugs. Their goal is to create molecules that concentrate their activity on the tumour itself, to maximise effectiveness and minimise side effects.
“The use of most current cancer drugs is limited by their tolerability for patients,” explains Bernardes, “so our main goal is to develop drugs that act very selectively in the right tissues, for example in the tumour itself or in the environment around it, and release its potent anti-tumour effect right there, only there, without side effects.”
They do this by chemically binding the drug compound to molecules that – like antibodies – guide them to the tumour. This strategy, applied through different approaches, has already given rise to several patents and is being tested in various clinical trials, against glioblastoma brain tumours and against solid tumours in general.
Research with major translational potential
Bernardes is the author of more than 195 scientific publications and holds two dozen patents. He graduated from Lisbon University in 2004. He then moved to Oxford University, UK, where he completed his thesis in Chemical Biology in 2008. After a brief period in Portugal, where he worked in a biotechnology company, he moved to ETH in Zurich (Switzerland). In 2013, he set up a group at Cambridge University, UK, thanks to a scholarship from the Royal Society. He has been a professor at this university since 2022. He also founded the Chemical Biology and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Unit at the Lisbon Institute of Molecular Medicine.
Bernardes has published more than 195 articles in high impact scientific journals in the research community. He has received funding through the most competitive research projects, such as those of the European Research Council, and has authored 20 patents.
Therapy against glioblastoma
The high translational potential of his research has led to the creation of several companies: TargTex is developing a selective therapy for the treatment of glioblastoma; and Proteotype Diagnostics, currently in the early phases, is working on the development of a liquid biopsy. In addition, Bernardes is a member of the boards of directors and/or an advisor to several companies and is a Senior Fellow in the largest global risk incubator – FlagshipPioneering, generated by Moderna.
He has received numerous awards throughout his career. One of the most recent was awarded by the British Royal Society of Chemistry, the world’s leading chemistry research society. On the website for this award, Bernardes states: “Chemistry is central to biology, and I believe it is the greatest tool to decipher disease biology at the molecular level, which will then inform how to create next-generation therapeutics that are specific to diseased cells and not harmful to healthy cells.”