i3S project in pediatric sarcomas wins Nonô fellowship
A team of researchers led by Carla Oliveira won the second edition of the Fellowship in Nonô Pediatric Sarcomas, awarded by the Liga Portuguesa Contra o Cancro (LPCC - the Portuguese League Against Cancer). Worth 15 thousand euros, this award will make it possible to identify biomarkers of disease progression and test new therapies aimed at this form of cancer, which has a high mortality rate at very young ages.
Pediatric sarcomas are one of the most aggressive and common cancers in pediatric age. This type of tumor develops from tissues such as bone, muscle, or nerve and can appear anywhere in the human body. The i3S project focuses on the more efficient detection of this disease that occurs in the context of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome caused by germline variants in the TP53 gene.
The objective of this work, explains Carla Oliveira, “is to improve the surveillance of individuals with mutations in the TP53 gene, since these people are, from the moment they are born, at high risk of developing various types of cancer in different organs”.
As part of the doctoral project (MCBiology doctoral program) at i3S, Alexandre Dias found that 53 percent of pediatric cancers that occur in Portuguese families with hereditary cancer syndrome related to TP53 are sarcomas. From then on, he explains, “the need arose to improve ways of monitoring individuals at higher risk for more efficient detection of the disease”.
With this objective, the team led by Carla Oliveira, and which includes researchers Alexandre Dias and Rita Barbosa-Matos, as well as Rita Quental, medical geneticist at Centro Hospitalar Universitário de São João, joined efforts to identify clinical biomarkers of sarcoma through models 3D images derived from individuals with mutations in the TP53 gene.
The funding granted, highlights Rita Barbosa Matos, “will be essential to establish new study models that recapitulate the development of the tumor using material from patients”. This approach, says Rita Quental, “will make it possible to identify biomarkers of disease progression, and, eventually, test new therapies aimed at this form of cancer, which has a high mortality rate at very young ages”.
About the Sarcomas Pediátricos Nonô fellowship
Created in 2022 by the Portuguese League Against Cancer - Núcleo Regional do Sul, in partnership with the parents of a girl who fought against this disease, the Sarcomas Pediátricos Nonô fellowship aims to support research projects in this area, developed in Portuguese Institutions, with the aim of improving the lives of these children.
The second edition of this grant was awarded at the VIII Oncology Research Conferences, which took place at the António Magalhães Cardoso Auditorium, in Lisbon, on April the 14th. The first edition of this scholarship was also won by a team from the i3S.