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11/10/2023 - Institutional news

Dr. Pedro Rocha receives one of the doctoral thesis awards from the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM).

The prizes were awarded at the SEOM congress held in Barcelona at the end of September.

The doctoral thesis of Dr. Pedro Rocha, assistant doctor at the Oncology Department of the Hospital del Mar and researcher at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, has received one of the five grants awarded by the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) to doctoral theses by young researchers. The award ceremony took place on 22 September during the congress of the organisation.

The study, entitled 'Evaluation of immune biomarkers in Lung Cancer', was carried out at the Lung Cancer Research Laboratory of the Hospital del Mar Research Institute and was supervised by Dr. Edurne Arriola, head of the laboratory. Part of the research was carried out during Dr. Rocha's stay at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, in the United States.

The study is based on the premise that there are no markers of response to immunotherapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. In this sense, the role of the adenosine signalling pathway as a mechanism that tumours adopt to escape the immune system and thus predict resistance to immunotherapy treatment is analysed. In turn, the results point to a set of genes and immunohistochemical markers underlying the response to the combination of chemotherapy and neoadjuvant immunotherapy in resectable non-small cell lung cancer tumours.

In total, the SEOM will award 51 grants, with a budget of around 1.25 million euros. The aim of the grants is to enable the winners to carry out research and training to improve the survival and quality of life of cancer patients.

Drs Pedro Rocha and Edurne Arriola

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