i3S researcher's work on pancreatic cancer distinguished

Researcher Cristina Xavier, postdoc in the Cancer Drug Resistance group, was recently awarded the second place prize for the best oral presentation at the International Online Symposium on “New Therapeutic Tools Against Preclinical Models of Multidrug Resistant Tumors”. The work suggests the relevance of the tumor microenvironment in the response and resistance to therapy in pancreatic cancer.

This symposium, which took place on November 4, 2020, was organized by Working Group 3 of Action COST 17104 (STRATAGEM), coordinated by Helena Vasconcelos, Cancer Drug Resistance group leader and professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Porto. The main objective of this COST is to improve the diagnosis and therapy of tumors resistant to multiple drugs.

Entitled “Chitinase 3-like-1 and Fibronectin present on extracellular vesicles shed by human macrophages induce gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer cells”, the work presented by Cristina Xavier “demonstrates the impact of extracellular vesicles released by macrophages on the response of pancreatic cancer cells to a chemotherapeutic agent”.

This work, which was recently published in the journal “Cancer Letters”, was supervised by researcher Helena Vasconcelos and co-supervised by Maria José Oliveira, Tumor and Microenvironment Interactions group leader. It also counted on the collaborations of researchers Lúcio Lara Santos, leader of the “Experimental Pathology and Therapeutics” group at IPO-Porto, and Luísa Pereira, leader of the Genetic Diversity group.