4 November 2013
Dr Nicola Valeri, from The Institute of Cancer Research, London’s Division of Molecular Pathology, has won the 2013 AstraZeneca Student Prize Award. The prize is given to early career researchers for exceptional work in the field of cancer research.
Dr Valeri received the award at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) conference in Liverpool in recognition of his work demonstrating the important role played by a particular microRNA – a tiny piece of genetic material which can affect many genes – in colon cancer.
Dr Valeri, who recently moved from the University of Glasgow to take up a post at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), also won an Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) award for the oral presentation of his work earlier this year. You can watch the prize-winning presentation in full in this AMS video.
One of the main aims of Dr Valeri’s team is to find new possible targets for cancer therapy in colon and other gastro-intestinal cancers, such as oesophageal cancer.
The study of micro-RNAs – miRNAs for short – is an exciting and developing field in cancer research. Each miRNA can have a profound effect on a cell by controlling how many proteins are produced by individual genes. Studying miRNAs poses a significant challenge because their effects cannot be understood simply by looking at the genetic code contained within our DNA.
Dr Valeri gave his prize-winning presentation at the NCRI conference yesterday, where Andrea Lampis – who is studying for a PhD in Dr Valeri’s laboratory – also gave an oral presentation on the role of a different miRNA in colorectal cancer progression.
On receiving the award, Dr Valeri said: “I’m very pleased to win this award, which is for work which I hope will help lead eventually to new treatments for colon cancer. The study of microRNAs is very important because they could give us a completely different route to new therapies for cancer patients.
“This research project focused on a microRNA called mRNA135b, which we showed is not only more common in people with colon cancer, but is also actively involved in the processes that drive the disease. It’s part of an incredibly complex picture of gene regulation in colon cancer which we are now only beginning to understand.”