
Four basic questions about organ and tissue donations
15 April 2019
IX Breakfast with Science
16 April 2019The article published in the magazine 'Cancer Cell' summarizes the thesis work of Teresa Blasco from Teruel.
The latest advance against one of the most aggressive forms of pancreatic cancer has an Aragonese signature. Teresa Blasco Lázaro from Teruel is the first author of the article published in the magazine 'Cancer Cell' that announces that, for the first time, the disappearance of pancreatic tumors in mice has been achieved. “Practically all of my thesis work is collected in this article,” she summarizes. The results obtained make her “very very happy”: after combining two therapeutic targets, the regression of advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (ADP) is complete. The tumor disappears.
The Aragonese biologist values that “It is a great step in the fight against this disease. Something like this had never been achieved before, but it is true that this has been achieved in animal models and there is a long way to go before it can be transferred to humans.” Teresa Blasco has been working in this line for six years, “since 2013, when I started my doctorate,” under the direction of Mariano Barbacid at the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). Now, her thesis work culminates with this publication. "The world of science is very competitive and very complicated and it is increasingly difficult to publish your results -she acknowledges. It requires a lot of effort and sacrifice."
Born in Calamocha (Teruel), Blasco works at the IRB (Institute for Research in Biomedicine) in Barcelona, in the Cancer Growth and Metastasis Control group. She has a degree in Biology from the University of Valencia and a master's degree in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biomedicine from the Complutense of Madrid. She received her doctorate two years ago in Molecular Biosciences.
The signatories of the article in 'Cancer Cell', with Blasco as first author, are researchers from the CNIO Experimental Oncology Group, which Barbacid directs. Over the last five years, this team of scientists has developed a new generation of genetically modified mouse models - pancreatic cancer models obtained from patients - which have made it possible, on the one hand, to evaluate the therapeutic effect of molecular targets in mice carrying advanced tumors and, on the other hand, identify possible toxic effects by eliminating or inhibiting these targets throughout the organism. The project has been financed in part by the Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer.