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An Aragonese scientist receives 2,5 million euros from Europe to advance cancer treatments
José Manuel García, researcher of I3A from the University of Zaragoza, has obtained a European scholarship 2,5 million to finance his research regarding the cancer immunotherapy treatments for the next five years. His study, "at the edge of science", will analyze how cells move and interact, specifically those of the immune system. "These modified cells are used to treat tumors and work very well in leukemia, but they do not work in solid tumors," she explained. Precisely, her project will try to analyze the aforementioned behaviors and how it affects the tumor microenvironment to try to "overcome these obstacles" and that, in the future, the therapy may be effective in solid cancers.
All this research will be applied to three solid tumors: lung, liver and pancreas. "ICoMICS will constitute an ideal virtual research platform that will allow us to recreate the microenvironment of solid tumors and test the effectiveness of different immunotherapy strategies," said José Manuel García Aznar. They intend that when it comes to penetrating the tumor, it will not be a single cell. , but rather a group of cells face this environment, which "work in a coordinated manner and thus eliminate the obstacles created by solid tumors, which have a high non-physiological rigidity and a significant level of stress".
This project is one of 11 that the European Research Council (ERC) has awarded in the 'Advanced Grants' category to researchers from Spanish centres, the only one in Aragon. The director of the I3A, Pablo Lagunas, highlighted that this is "the third ERC project that it has achieved." He was the first I3A researcher to obtain a 'Starting Grant' (INSILICO-CELL), a H2020 Proof of concept (IMAGO) and now the first to achieve this H2020 'Advanced Grant' that will allow it to carry out its ICoMICS (Individual and Collective Migration of the Immune Cellular System) project.
