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The adjunct director of IRB Barcelona has been granted the award in recognition of his outstanding work in cancer metastasis.
Today, the researcher Joan Massagué i Solé (Barcelona, 1953) has been granted the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Biomedicine. Massagué's studies have revealed fundamental processes behind the regulation of cell division and have identified key genes involved in cancer and metastasis. These studies "have great potential for clinical applications", remarked the jury, chaired by Torsten Wielsen, Nobel Prize winner for Physiology and Medicine. The award is worth 400,000 euros.
The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards recognize and encourage world-class research and artistic creation. With monetary prizes amounting to 3.2 million euros a year and covering a wide range of scientific and artistic disciplines, these awards, according to the BBVA Foundation, are among the most important in the world after the Nobel Prizes.
Massagué has devoted more than twenty years to elucidating the role of the TGF-Beta protein in cell growth and division. His work has revealed that an imbalance in TGF-Beta receptors contributes to the spread of cancer cells. Massagué has also identified the metastatic features of breast cancer cells, which can be used to predict the capacity of tumour cells to spread into other organs. Thus, these studies have demonstrated that, on some occasions, it is possible to identify genetic predisposition in early stage tumours before the cancer has started to spread. Massagué’s work is an example of the need to answer basic biological questions in order to further our understanding of cancer, to identify new therapeutic targets, and to develop new diagnostic tools and new treatments.
Joan Massagué obtained his PhD in Pharmacy (Biochemistry) from the University of Barcelona. In 1989 he was recruited by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he currently serves as head of the Cancer Biology and Genetics Program. Since the end of 2005, he has been the adjunct director of IRB Barcelona. Joan Massagué’s mission, together with director Joan J. Guinovart, is to design competitive research programmes, recruit leading scientists and formulate advanced research policies with the goal to make IRB Barcelona a first-class research centre in biomedicine. Furthermore, Massagué supervises a laboratory, known as the Metlab, which is devoted to the study of cancer metastasis. This laboratory works closely with his own lab in New York. IRB Barcelona is located in the Barcelona Science Park (Parque Científico de Barcelona -PCB-), on the University of Barcelona’s Diagonal Campus.
About IRB Barcelona
The Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) pursues a society free of disease. To this end, it conducts multidisciplinary research of excellence to cure cancer and other diseases linked to ageing. It establishes technology transfer agreements with the pharmaceutical industry and major hospitals to bring research results closer to society, and organises a range of science outreach activities to engage the public in an open dialogue. IRB Barcelona is an international centre that hosts 400 researchers and more than 30 nationalities. Recognised as a Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence since 2011, IRB Barcelona is a CERCA centre and member of the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST).
