Marathons are paying off

The record collection of the 2012 TV3 charity Marathon has been transformed, six years later, into a series of diagnostic and therapeutic tools to fight cancer more effectively. The €12.4 million in donations have resulted in scientific advances that already benefit Catalan patients. For example, developing a profile of the aggressiveness of the tumors much more accurately from the analysis and comparison of their mutations, thanks to a new tool that is already used in 90 countries.

This is just one of the examples presented yesterday at a symposium where 79 teams of researchers benefiting from funds of the TV3 charity project announced the results of the 42 projects they have carried in recent years. Liquid biopsies that allow controlling the evolution of treatment without biopsies, therapies with genetically modified cells and the discovery of new tumour markers are other promising results obtained thanks to the thousands of anonymous contributions.

Some projects have developed even further, such as the procedure developed by Beatriz Bellosillo at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (IMIM) which originally allowed her to monitor the evolution of lung cancers with blood samples, without the need for a traditional biopsy. Now, this has been successfully applied to colon and melanoma cancers and is being tested in for cancers in the breast and ovaries.

Also at the IMIM, funds have been used so that the specialist in clinical pharmacology, Lluís Espinosa, has been able to carry out research that has been able to identify “a key protein for the treatment of colorectal cancer that predicts the probability of relapse and metastasis” and which has led to more efficient treatment.