XII FERO Grant – Dr. María Abad

There is great interest in understanding how to inactivate cellular plasticity (the ability of tumor cells to transform and change their properties). This project focuses on pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest tumors, and aims to identify new micropeptides that are key to plasticity and tumor progression. Micropeptides are small proteins that have gone completely unnoticed until now, but are believed to play an important role in cancer. This work seeks to increase knowledge about pancreatic cancer and understand why current therapies fail. Furthermore, the discovery of new micropeptides may open the door to the development of new antitumor therapies. The ultimate goal is to provide relevant information in oncology research that may, in the long term, lead to better treatments for cancer patients.

To date, five new micropeptides have been identified, and the results obtained demonstrate that all of them have tumor suppressor functions, inducing tumor cell death, halting their division, or preventing them from invading other tissues.