On Thursday 13 March 2025, IDIBAPS held the first meeting of the new research project ‘AECC-IDIBAPS Excellence Programme: Immunotherapy Against Cancer’. Funded by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC), the project has a budget of 2 million euros and is expected to last four years.
Its main objective is to identify the biological mechanisms that explain why some patients with liver cancer, breast cancer or haematological tumours do not respond to immunotherapy or develop resistance, detecting new biomarkers and developing treatments that boost these patients’ life expectancy and quality of life.
Two project launch meetings were held. One was internal and involved the main research group leaders. The other was external and took place online with the AECC. This second meeting was led by Elías Campo, the director of IDIBAPS and the project’s leader; Michela Bertero, IDIBAPS’ strategy director and the programme’s manager; and Marta Puyol, the scientific director of the Scientific Foundation of the Spanish Association Against Cancer.
The multidisciplinary and translational project integrates several IDIBAPS research groups and platforms to provide extensive experience in different areas:
This close collaboration between research groups and scientific platforms at IDIBAPS and Hospital Clínic Barcelona will provide access to large cohorts of patients with efficient sample collection and data analysis systems, thereby maximising the information obtained.
The project envisages carrying out precision trials to understand the biology of tumours and their environment, with the goal of deciphering why some patients do not respond to immunotherapy treatment or why the disease reappears over time. Artificial intelligence-based systems will also be developed that will integrate all these data to identify the key factors of response and resistance to tumour treatments.
Immunotherapy has revolutionised 21st-century oncology, with notable successes such as treatment with CAR-T cells, lymphocytes reprogrammed to attack tumours. IDIBAPS-Hospital Clínic Barcelona has long been a pioneer in this field by being the first institution to develop academic CAR-T. However, some patients do not respond adequately to these treatments, which makes it urgent to understand the mechanisms that lead to immunotherapies’ success or failure. This programme will help us to enhance this area of knowledge, with patients being the ultimate beneficiaries.
Image: 'AECC-IDIBAPS Excellence Programme' internal meeting.
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