Abril Sánchez, holder of a PhD in Health Sciences and a lecturer at UIC Barcelona, received an EMBO fellowship to undertake a research visit at the Francis Crick Institute in London. For three months, Dr Sánchez worked as part of the group led by Dr Vivian Li, which focuses on studying the development of the intestine from a physiological perspective and colon cancer. 

The researcher collaborated on a project concerning the use of immunotherapy in colon cancer. According to Dr Sánchez, “this study arose following the division of colon cancer into four types based on their molecular characteristics. Dr Li’s group is interested in the second kind of tumour, the one that affects the greatest number of patients (37%) and whose main characteristic is a hyperactive Wnt pathway, one of the principal pathways in cancer and stemness. The Wnt molecule causes stem cells to grow out of control and form a tumour”.  

Abril Sánchez also took part in another project, as a follow-up to her doctoral thesis on oncology and cancer biology. The lecturer worked with a cyclin, a protein that regulates the cell cycle, called CCNP (until recently known as CNTD2) and analysed its role in cancer.