The research team led by Jesús San Miguel, professor of Hematology at the Universidad de Salamanca and head of the Department of Hematology at the Hospital Universitario de Salamanca, works hand in hand with another team from the Centro de Investigación Médica Aplicada (CIMA), a center for applied medical research in Pamplona (Spain), conducting studies on new therapeutic agents to enhance patients’ immune response against cancer. Specifically, their chief objective is to bring this type of clinical research to hematological malignancies working with the team led by Ignacio Melero Bermejo, researcher at CIMA.

A study conducted by the Instituto de Neurociencias de Castilla y León (Incyl), an institute of neurosciences at the Universidad de Salamanca (Spain), has proved the increased expression of a protein called connexin 43 contributes to reduce an oncogene (a gene turning a normal cell into a tumor cell). In this case, we refer to the oncogene c-Src in glioma stem cells, the most common brain tumor. Consequently, the study suggests that connexin 43 may be useful to develop new therapies against brain tumors.

The Centro de Investigación del Cáncer (CIC), a cancer research center in Salamanca (Spain), is performing trials with a drug proven effective in preclinical studies against Ewing’s sarcoma, a type of cancer affecting mostly children and young adults. This rare disease primarily has an impact on bones, but also on other soft tissues; scientists think that at least a group of patients with poor prognosis may benefit from a therapy that is also being under studies to fight other neoplasms.

The European Commission has launched a project under the Seventh Framework Programme in which a dozen partners from universities and companies work together in order to sequence the genome of leukemia patients; the main objective is to design tailored and more effective therapies. The study is to be conducted between 2013 and 2015 and a research team from Salamanca is participating as the only Spanish partner.