The aim of the CarrerasLeaders program is to fund 16 excellent postdoctoral researchers for a period of 3 years. The selected participants will join the Josep Carreras Institute’s research groups or research-performing Scientific Platforms and perform international secondments to academic and non-academic institutions. The program receives funding from the European Commission Horizon Europe Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) COFUND Program and counts with the collaboration of the Josep Carreras International Foundation and the scientific coordination of Dr Buschbeck.

The Single Cell unit of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute has received the seal of quality that accredits the institution as a reference center in Spain for the Visum Spatial Gene Expression technology, from the company 10x Genomics. The accreditation, has been formalized at the first 10x Genomics Spatial Symposium, organized jointly and which has taken place in the main building of the Josep Carreras Institute, at the Can Ruti campus in Badalona.

Last Monday, March 13, the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) held an awards ceremony at their Barcelona headquarters for their 2022 research grants. Two researchers from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, Dr. Jeanine Diesch and Dr. Talia Velasco, received grants addressed to researchers. In addition, Dr. Marcus Buschbeck received funding for a general fundamental research project.

The Sant Boi City Council, in collaboration with the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, has created the "Manel Esteller Award for Initiation in Biomedical Research" to promote biomedical research on leukemia, lymphomas and other malignant blood diseases. The award was officially presented at the Sant Joan de Déu Campus Docent in Sant Boi on Friday, March 10, in a ceremony attended by the researcher, the Minister of Science and Innovation, Diana Morant, and the mayor of the city, Lluïsa Moret.

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya's Vice President for Strategic Planning and Research, Dr. Marta Aymerich, and the Deputy General Manager of R&I, Mr. Ciro Llueca, have visited the headquarters of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute and have met with its management team to launch a new scientific collaboration created by both institutions.

A consortium led by OneChain Immunotherapeutics, spin-off of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, has received the support of the European Commission to bring an innovative CAR-T therapy to the bedside. The novelty of the treatment lies in the fact that it does not depend on extraction of the patient's own cells, and it simultaneously attacks two cancer cell targets.

The Catalan Minister of Research and Universities, Mr. Joaquim Nadal, has visited the facilities of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, where he has met with its management team, led by Dr. Manel Esteller. Mr. Nadal has commended the cutting-edge research carried out at the Institute.

In a recent publication at the journal eJHaem, a team of researchers from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute have given supporting evidence that the presence of the so-called “regions of homozygosity” in the genome of patients with myelodysplastic syndrome with no detectable chromosomic abnormalities confer a worst prognosis, especially when these regions are larger than 25 megabases.

We sit down with Dr. Sònia Guil, head of the Regulatory RNA and chromatin at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, who has just received two grants, one from the FINRett Foundation and another one from the Rett Syndrome Foundation, to fund her research on Rett syndrome, a severe minority disease of genetic origin.

The high-impact journal Leukemia recognizes a study of the Cancer Epigenetics Group, led by Dr Manel Esteller at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, among the “Readers Choice: The best of Leukemia 2022”. The research describes how highly proliferative leukemia cells end up becoming normal cells that no longer multiply, by changing the epigenetic modifications of a type of its genetic material: the messenger RNA.