The team, headed by Manuel Valiente from CNIO, which counts with the contributions of scientists from other Research Centres, namely the Champalimaud Foundation, found that a simple blood test can help detect patients with resistance to brain radiotherapy and identified a drug that might reverse it. A multi-centre clinical study is now under way to validate the predictive potential of this biomarker through the National Brain Metastasis Network (Spanish acronym: RENACER).

The study is being published in Nature Medicine this week.

Rita Fior uses zebrafish to do basic and translational research in cancer at the Champalimaud Foundation. A few years ago, having to deal with cancer in her family led her to design a test, based on her animal “model” – that would allow doctors to choose, among the available chemotherapeutic options, the best one for a given patient. How? Using the little zebrafish as “avatars”, as personalised “alter-egos” of the patients. Tumour cells from a patient are injected in the fish, generating the “avatars'' that will then be submitted to the treatment options available for that patient.

At long last, this year CR researchers were finally able to celebrate Brain Awareness Week in the best way possible - doing science with kids! The activities took place over two days, one at a school in Amadora and the other at Lisbon’s Science Centre, called “Pavilhão do Conhecimento”.