The ERC Synergy Grants are among the most prestigious and competitive funding schemes offered by the European Research Council (ERC), with an acceptance rate currently around 5%. They are designed to support highly ambitious, excellence-driven research projects that cannot be carried out by a single team and therefore foster synergies between multiple research groups. These grants fund innovative and transformative projects with the potential to produce significant breakthroughs at the frontiers of knowledge.
Martin-Subero’s group, working closely with Trevor Graham (Institute of Cancer Research, London), Martina Seiffert (German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg), and Alison Simmons (University of Oxford), will coordinate research into cancer in the context of ageing over the next six years. The project will focus on two age-associated cancers, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and colorectal cancer, with the aim of understanding how not only tumour cells but also the immune and stromal components of the tumour microenvironment evolve over time.
By analysing human samples collected across different stages of life and disease, the project aims to investigate the evolution of ageing-associated cell populations that may promote tumour development and represent new opportunities for prevention.
A central component of the EDEN project is the development and application of EVOFLUx, an innovative technology based on fluctuations in DNA methylation that enables researchers to reconstruct the evolutionary history of tissues without relying on genetic markers. Combining this methodology with single-cell analysis and spatial technologies will make it possible to study, at unprecedented resolution, the dynamics of epithelial, immune, and stromal cells in both healthy and tumour tissues. The results will help clarify when and how the tumour microenvironment is established and whether certain ageing-related changes precede cancer development.
Overall, EDEN aims to create a conceptual framework for understanding cancer as an evolutionary process that unfolds over decades, laying the foundations for future early prevention strategies that could intervene before the disease becomes clinically apparent.
EDEN will be the fourth IDIBAPS project funded through an ERC Synergy Grant. Previous recipients include the DRIMMS project, coordinated by Albert Pol, head of the Lipid Trafficking and Disease research group; the NEMESIS project, involving Mavi Sanchez-Vives, head of the Systems Neuroscience group; and the BCLLatlas project, involving Elias Campo, head of the Molecular Pathology of Lymphoid Neoplasms group, and Iñaki Martín-Subero. With EDEN, Martín-Subero becomes the first IDIBAPS researcher to be awarded two ERC Synergy Grants.
Funded by the European Union (GA: 101307920). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union can be held responsible for them.
