Celebrated today at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universitat de Barcelona Albert Barberá, Director General for Research and Innovation in Health of the Catalan Government, and Mónica Palomanes, Director of Regional Access and Business of Roche Spain, presented Verónica Rodilla, Post-Doctoral Fellow of VHIO’s Growth Factors Group directed by Joaquín Arribas, with one of Roche Spain’s newly launched Stop Fuga de Cerebros (Stop Brain Drain) grants.
Totaling at 60.000 EUR, and constituting a new addition to Roche’s portfolio of recognition and support aimed at promoting biomedical research of excellence, these awards support leading pre or post-doctoral researchers across various autonomous regions including Catalonia. In the company of other autonomies and their respective Departments of Health, including Andalucia, Aragón Canarias, Castilla-La-Mancha, País Vasco, Madrid, Murcia and the Community of Valencia, Catalonia has also committed to this important initiative and in so doing, further protecting and stimulating ‘home-grown’ science as well as nurturing the careers of its young research talents.
More specifically, Roche Spain will fuel Verónica’s investigation that aims at better describing cellular senescence in cancer progression, resistance to conventional chemotherapies, and metastasis. Most importantly, her research promises precious new insights in VHIO’s collective efforts focused on reversing tumor recurrence and putting the brakes on cancer cell spread.
Commenting earlier for VHIO Communications, Verónica said, “I am truly honored to have received this award and would like to express my gratitude to Roche Farma Spain for its belief and backing of my research. Not only will this funding enable me to further pursue my scientific career here at VHIO, in broader terms, and perhaps even more importantly, these Stop Brain Drain Awards represent an important investment in the future of young investigators ‘at home’ and contribute to the very science that drives advancements against terrible diseases such as cancer.”
“While I will be exploring the role and relevance of senescent cells in the most aggressive of all breast cancer types, namely HER2-Positive and Triple-Negative, I am hopeful that my findings might ultimately contribute to the development of more potent and effective therapies against all breast cancer subtypes,” she concluded.
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