The National Cancer Research Center is generating record revenue from agreements with international companies committed to excellence in cancer research.

Photo: Underbau/CNIO

The significant increase in the number of patents licensed by the National Center for Cancer Research (CNIO) and collaboration agreements with industry represents “an amazing achievement for a public research institution,” says the CNIO’s chief innovation officer. Rock I. Oruezabal, in the center’s just-released 2023 annual report. The impact of CNIO’s scientific output also exceeds that of previous years.

Collaboration agreements with some of the world’s leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies brought CNIO revenues of almost €4 million, representing an increase of 66% compared to the previous year.

As for patents for inventions and developments of the center’s research groups, in 2023 36% of their total number will be transferred to companies under licenses.

For Maria A. Blasco, Scientific Director of CNIO, “These achievements reflect the leadership and influence of CNIO and our researchers around the world in the field of innovation. “We contribute to the transfer of knowledge gained at the CNIO to society, so that it can be used to benefit patients.”

Development of drug candidates

Blasco highlighted the CNIO’s drug discovery program: “We continue to work on co-developing drug candidates based on new targets approved by the CNIO to create new therapeutics against cancer and diseases of aging.”

CNIO is one of the few research centers in Spain capable of producing chemical compounds that have the potential to become new drugs, based on the results of research at the center. Researchers are identifying molecules that can be manipulated chemically and creating compounds that can achieve therapeutic effects. Once they are patented, industry can continue to develop them (it will be more than a decade before they reach patients, if all trials pass).

“Bridge between basic research and the pharmaceutical industry”

In 2023, CNIO was working on more than five families of new compounds. Last year, the compound CNIO received US FDA designation as a treatment for the rare pediatric disease neuroblastoma tumor.

As you explained Joaquin Pastor, Director of the Experimental Therapeutics Program at CNIO, “We are the bridge connecting basic research to the pharmaceutical industry; “We know both worlds and we know how to bring them together.”

In addition, a new company was born in 2023 spin off from CNIO, TNC Terapia, created in collaboration with the Biomedical Research Hospitals Foundation on October 12 (FIBH12O). Both institutions are co-owners of the LUMICA technology, which uses precision nutrition as a therapeutic tool against cancer and which is the result of the work of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Unit led by Miguel A. Quintela.

High Impact Science

According to Blasco, knowledge generation, the scientific output of the CNIO, was also “excellent” again in 2023, with 129 research articles published, 59 of them in journals with an impact factor of more than 15. This figure “represents the high point in a historical series with the moment CNIO began its activities.” The impact factor communicates the importance that the scientific community places on the research conducted.

Deputy Director of CNIO, Oscar Fernandez-Capetillohighlights progress in all areas of research and mentions as examples “bioinformatics projects under development to predict drug response and atomic-level imaging of molecular mechanisms that repair DNA.”

Other “exciting work,” says Fernandez-Capetillo, includes the development of “innovative cellular immunotherapies, deciphering the basis of resistance to RAS gene inhibitors, the potential for therapeutic targeting of the RANK signaling pathway for the treatment of breast cancer, or our contribution to the most comprehensive project to genomically characterize rare tumors.”

Success in European competitive projects

The Gemelas Digitales precision oncology project for female cancer and the development of the IMPaCT_VUSCan platform for the search for undiagnosed hereditary cancers have benefited from innovative assistance from the Spanish Research Agency, co-financed by European NextGenerationEU funds.

The project to develop liquid biopsy, a non-invasive method for detecting early-stage cancer cells in patients’ blood, also received a grant from the European Health Innovation Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI-JU) program.

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