The UB and Atrys Health create a chair to promote research on precision oncology radiotherapy

Research in the framework of the new Chair will focus on three main lines: customization of treatments with radiotherapy through radio-sensitivity and radiotoxicity studies, predictive diagnostic prior to high precision radiotherapy treatment; and the effect of radiotherapy in the immune response to cancer.

In the signing ceremony and the following presentation by the rector of the UB, Joan Guàrdia, highlighted that “this chair has a combination of ingredients —public instutitions, business, knowledge and ethics— that will make it successful and will provide a future commitment that will enable going from massive therapy to a customized one, and from talking about disease to talk about ill people".

Also, Ferrán Guedea, professor at the Department of Clinical Sciences of the UB, and director of the chair, noted that “this chair, among other activities, will organize a symposium on translational research on radiotherapy oncology and will award the top submitted projects. It will promote research lines such as predictive radiotoxicity and radiosensitivity studies, and the immune response to high doses of radiotherapy”. Last, Santiago de Torres put emphasis on the “importance of the research and translational medicine for Atrys, specially in the field of hypofractionated or high-precision radiotherapy”.

Other participants in the event were Jorge Contreras, president of the Spanish Society of Radiation Oncology; Josep M. Bombí, emeritus professor of the UB and president of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Catalonia; Laureano Molins, president of the Spanish Association against Cancer and UB lecturer; Joan Miquel Nolla, vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB and Candela Calle, director-general of the Catalan Institute of Oncology of the Catalan Government.

National Awards for Research on Customized Radiotherapy
Among the actions to develop in order to fulfil the mentioned objectives is the call for the “National Awards for Research on Customized Radiotherapy”, awards that will honour every year the top three research articles published in distinguished scientific journals and in which the first or last autor belongs to a research group set in Spain.
Apart from the aforementioned, as part of this training activity, there will be an annual conference on “Advances on Translational Research on Radiotherapy”, with the participation of a distinguished international speaker and which will serve as a forum for the presentation and award ceremony.