The Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) will soon publish an article in the prestigious magazines Cancer Research and Oncoimmunology in which they will present the discovery of a new protein, Galectin-1, which slows down pancreatic cancer and is estimated to increase survival by 20%.
This research, carried out in collaboration with the Pathological Anatomy Service of the Hospital del Mar, has focused on the study of pancreatic tumors of mice with high levels of Galectin-1 and tumors after eliminating it. It was observed that the tumors in which Galectin-1 was not present, they showed less proliferation, fewer blood vessels, less inflammation and instead had an increased immunological component, especially in less aggressive tumors.
The research represents a great advance, since Pancreatic Cancer has particularly low survival rates (5-year survival from diagnosis of less than 2%).
Socializing scientific findings, the result of the collective effort of society, is a way of understanding the importance of investment in R&D also in times of crisis.