Skip to main content
< Back to news
All the attendees at the ceremony in the AECC institutional act held in Barcelona (Photo: AECC)
 22.03.2017

The AECC supports cancer research at IRB Barcelona

Today, Jelena Urosevic and Carles Barceló, postdoctoral fellows at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) at the Barcelona Science Park, will officially be presented with funding over 5 years from the Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer (AECC) for their respective research projects on colon cancer. To date, IRB Barcelona has secured AECC funding for eight cancer projects.

 

Carles Barceló is a scientist in the Colorectal Cancer Laboratory, headed by ICREA researcher Eduard Batlle. Barceló’s project focuses on studying the colon cancer stem cells responsible for the initiation and progression of the tumour. His research line seeks to identify new mechanisms of tumour stem cells under the specific control of given oncogenes and thereby allow researchers to design therapies aimed to interfere with tumour development.

Jelena Urosevic works in the Cancer Growth and Metastasis Laboratory, run by ICREA researcher Roger Gomis. Urosevic concentrates on the metastases caused by colon cancer in the liver and lung. The project seeks to identify, within a family of proteins called phosphatases, those that are regulated by the metastatic process in colon cancer.

This morning the AECC has held an institutional act in Barcelona chaired by Her Majesty the Queen, honorary president of the AECC and its scientific foundation, who has presented a total of 7.9 million euros to 34 researchers (22 projects).

Barceló and Urosevic both comment on the importance of AECC support to give stability and continuity to their research careers and to be able to further knowledge of cancer and metastasis. “Research is the only weapon we have to fight cancer,” says Jelena Urosevic. Carles Barceló makes a comment that confirms the previous statement: “at the current pace of research, in 40 years it will be possible to treat any kind of cancer. Research should be supported, because the economic and social return for every euro invested is enormous”.
 

• For further information: IRB Barcelona webiste  [+]