The AECC grants a study on child cancer at VHIR

The Spanish association for cancer research (AECC) in Catalonia has given one of the 5 grants of the institution to a study led by Dr. Aroa Soriano, member of the Translational Research in Child Cancer group at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR).

Her study aims to determine the contribution of the extracellular kinase 5 (ERK5) in the aggressiveness of neuroblastoma, which is the most common solid type of tumor among children. According to Dr. Soriano, “the results of this project will be useful to obtain a biomarker of response to certain groups of patients that could response to the therapy based on the inhibition of the ERK5 kinase activity".

The recent development of pharmacological inhibitors of ERK5 has positioned this kinase as a therapeutic target in many cancers among adults. However, it has never been analyzed in the case of child cancer.

The prognosis of children with neuroblastoma is excellent in low risk patients, but worse in other stages. In fact, in the last 20 years, the survival of patients in the middle and high stages of the disease has not improved significantly and is among the 30 and 50%. For that reason, Dr. Soriano explains that “due to the existence of multiple mechanisms that cause the resistance to chemotherapy, and to the failure of current treatments, new therapeutic strategies are needed to treat the patients more effectively”.

The project duration is 2 years, has been granted with 20,000 euros and will be developed in collaboration with the Protein Kinases and Signal Transduction in Neuronal Cells research group of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). The AECC in Catalonia has granted a total of 5 Catalan research projects with 100,000 euros.

Image: Immunocytochemistry of ERK5 showing the cytosolic (SH-SY5Y) or nuclear (CHLA-90) distribution