Pfizer Award rewards i3S research on stomach cancer
Researcher Ana Magalhães won the Pfizer Prize in the clinical research category, worth 30 thousand euros. The team identified a new target that will allow the development of new therapies to stop the formation of metastases and improve the prognosis of patients with stomach cancer.
Awarded since 1956 by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the Lisbon Society of Medical Sciences, the Pfizer Prizes aim to support and promote scientific research, highlighting the excellence of Portuguese researchers. For Ana Magalhães, from the i3S group “Glycobiology in Cancer”, this distinction represents “a great honour and a source of joy for the entire team involved in this work, and will certainly be a motivation for us to continue developing this line of research and bringing scientific knowledge closer to a possible application in clinical practice”.
The project led by Ana Magalhães, who is also an Associate Professor at the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS), “focuses on the study of changes to the surface of cells that are exclusive to tumour cells, particularly the study of proteins and lipids in the so-called glycocalyx of cells, which when altered can play a determining role in tumour progression”.
The team led by Ana Magalhães discovered that “the proteoglycan Syndecan-4 (SDC4) is highly present in stomach tumours of the intestinal subtype and that increased expression is associated with greater invasion of tumour cells and a worse prognosis for patients”. The study, the researcher adds, “also demonstrates that SDC4 is transported by extracellular vesicles produced by tumour cells and is able to direct them to the liver and lung, precisely the organs where stomach cancer metastases commonly appear”.
With these discoveries, Ana Magalhães highlights, “our team contributed to the understanding of a new mechanism of communication between tumor cells, identifying a potential target for the development of new therapies that can stop the formation of metastases and improve the prognosis of patients with stomach cancer”. This work has particular importance since stomach cancer remains a global health challenge, with more than one million new cases diagnosed annually and symptoms typically only appear at a very advanced stage of the disease.
The work published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences brought together the efforts of a multidisciplinary team consisting of researchers and clinicians from five national institutions and one international institution: Juliana Poças (i3S and ICBAS), first author of this work, Catarina Marques (i3S and ICBAS), Catarina Gomes (i3S), Andreia Hanada Otake (Champalimaud Foundation), Filipe Pinto (i3S), Mariana Ferreira (i3S), Tiago Silva (i3S), Isabel Faria-Ramos (i3S), Rita Matos (i3S), Ana Raquel Ribeiro (i3S), Emanuel Senra (i3S), Bruno Cavadas (i3S), Sílvia Batista (Champalimaud Foundation), Joana Maia (Champalimaud Foundation), Joana A. Macedo (i3S) Luís Lima (IPO-Porto), Luís Pedro Afonso (IPO-Porto), José Alexandre Ferreira (IPO-Porto), Lúcio Lara Santos (IPO-Porto), António Poland (i3S, Ipatimup), Hugo Osório (i3S), Mattias Belting (Lund University), Celso A. Reis (i3S and ICBAS) Bruno Costa-Silva (Champalimaud Foundation) and Ana Magalhães (i3S and ICBAS).
In this 68th edition of the Pfizer Awards, the oldest award in the area of biomedical research in Portugal, researchers Caren Norden, from the GIMM Foundation, and Filipe Pereira, from the Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology of the University of Coimbra (CNC), were also recognized in the basic research category. Paulo Teixeira, General Director of Pfizer Portugal, highlights the relevance of the award-winning works: “The projects represent a valuable contribution to improving the quality of life of the population, reiterating the need for health and science to remain inseparable in the search for new therapeutic solutions”.