AXA announces €2 million endowment to establish AXA-CNIO Chair in Molecular Oncology

The AXA Research Fund is awarding 2 million euros to support an Endowed Chair in Molecular Oncology at the CNIO. The recipient of this Chair will be Dr. Mariano Barbacid, world-renowned molecular oncologist, who is focusing on the development of novel therapies against lung and pancreas cancer, two of the tumors with the lowest survival rates.

4 May 2012, Madrid - The AXA Research Fund, a global initiative of scientific philanthropy supported by the worldwide insurance Group AXA, is awarding 2 million euros to the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) to create a permanent Chair in Molecular Oncology, to be held by Dr. Mariano Barbacid. This Chair AXA-CNIO is the fifth Chair in the world created by AXA Research Fund in Life Sciences.

"This type of chairs is something completely new in Spain, which makes the philanthropic contribution made by AXA even more relevant " says Dr. Barbacid, who explains that "the first thing we are going to do with the resources generated by this endowment will be to establish a platform for clinical mouse trials using genetically engineered models that reproduces faithfully human lung adenocarcinoma".

For Javier de Agustín, CEO of AXA Spain, and sponsor of this Chair: “the AXA Research Fund support to Spanish research in these years shows the high level of excellence of Spanish Scientists. I’m also honored to become the sponsor of this chair and I look forward to a fruitful intellectual relationship with Dr. Barbacid: Cancer is a crucial threat to human life for an insurer and we are proud both to support a better understanding of this disease and to mutually nurture our expertise on this issue. We hope this may help to prevent it better.”

The philanthropic contribution of the AXA Research Fund supporting this Permanent Endowed Chair ensures the economic viability of the research over time due to the continued flow of resources derived from the interest generated by the 2 million euros endowment.

For Prof. María Blasco, Director of the CNIO since June 2011, "The CNIO needs now more than ever the generosity of such philanthropic initiative to be among the best research centers in the world in the fight against cancer. And I feel very proud and very grateful that AXA Research Fund so generously helped us take steps in that direction.”

Dr Barbacid´s research group is proposing to use a new generation of genetically modified animal tumors models that faithfully reproduce the development of human cancers to validate novel therapeutic strategies using both genetic approaches and pharmacological approaches. Specifically, Dr. Barbacid and colleagues will focus their studies on K-Ras oncogene-driven lung and pancreatic adenocarcinomas, two tumors types with some of the worst prognosis and survival. Indeed, despite the efforts dedicated over the last three decades, there are no selective drugs against these cancers yet.

Dr. Barbacid is one of the key contributors to the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of cancer. In the spring of 1982, while at the National Cancer Institute in the USA, he led one of three laboratories that independently discovered the first human cancer-causing gene (oncogene), H-Ras. This discovery opened up a new field in cancer biology and provided the first experimental evidence to establish the molecular bases of human cancer. In the same year, Dr. Barbacid also discovered that cancer was a genetic disease, that is to say a disease caused by mutations in our own genes.

His strategy is based on the successful use of multi-drug therapies to fight the AIDS virus. Yet, Dr. Barbacid warns that “lung cancer is much a more complex disease than AIDS. […] We expect the first results in 12 or 18 months."

Spain, an important place for world-class research acknowledged by the AXA Research Fund

Others researchers supported on a worldwide academic competition basis by the AXA Research Fund in Spain include: Prof Albert Marcet, AXA Chair on Macroeconomic Risk (Permanent chair 2009, Barcelona GSE); Prof Joan Esteban, AXA Project on Social Conflicts (Project 2008, U. Autónoma de Barcelona); Fabian Rinnen, Forecasting Risk: Realized Quantile Approach (PhD 2010, U. Carlos III de Madrid); Anatoli Segura, Roll-over Risk and debt maturity (PhD 2010, CEMFI).

Taking into account seven Spanish researchers supported abroad, the philanthropic support of the AXA Research Fund to Spanish research accounts for € 3.6 million.

About CNIO

The National Research Centre on Oncology (CNIO) was created by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III in 1998. Its mission is to develop excellent research and provide innovative technologies in the field of oncology at the Sistema Nacional de Salud.

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