ERC Synergy Grants are competitive awards from the European Research Council (ERC), with a success rate around 5%, aimed at funding ambitious research projects requiring collaboration between multiple teams. These grants support innovative projects with the potential to drive significant advances in knowledge.
Martín-Subero's group, in collaboration with researchers from London, Heidelberg, and Oxford, will coordinate research on cancer within the context of aging. The study will examine how tumor cells and their microenvironment evolve in chronic lymphocytic leukemia and colorectal cancer, two age-related cancers.
Through the analysis of human samples, the project aims to investigate cellular changes associated with aging that promote tumor development and could lead to new prevention strategies.
A central element of the EDEN project is the development of EVOFLUx, an innovative technology based on fluctuations in DNA methylation that allows the reconstruction of tissue evolution without the need for genetic markers. Combining this methodology with spatial technologies will enable unprecedented resolution in studying the dynamics of epithelial, immune, and stromal cells.
The goal is to generate a conceptual framework for understanding cancer as an evolutionary process and to lay the groundwork for future early prevention strategies.
EDEN will be the fourth project from IDIBAPS funded by the ERC Synergy Grant. Previously, the DRIMMS, NEMESIS, and BCLLatlas projects received these grants. With EDEN, Martín-Subero becomes the first researcher at IDIBAPS to obtain two ERC Synergy Grants.
