Mexican wins award for best thesis of the year in Cambridge

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The Mexican student Alejandro Jiménez Sánchez received the award for the best doctoral thesis of the year of the Institute of Cancer Research of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom (Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute).

The young man, a fellow of the National Council of Science and Technology ( Conacyt), did a doctoral study on how the immune system can recognize the cells of a cancerous tumor as a threat and fight them.

It is a project with a valuable contribution to immunotherapy, a new way of treating cancer, which seeks to activate the immune system of patients with this condition so that their own body is able to stop the progression of the disease.

Through its information agency, Conacyt reported that the Mexican student performed a genomic analysis of five tumors of the same patient, who was detected ovarian cancer at a very advanced stage and underwent surgery to remove the tumor.

However, after seven months of chemotherapy, cancer returned and it was when Alejandro Jiménez’s investigation began.

The student specialized in analyzing biological information with computational tools and when studying the genetic and molecular data of the samples of the patient’s original tumor and its four metastases, found indications that the cause of the reduction of two of the four tumors It was the immune system itself.

The university student, in collaboration with Alexandra Snyder, a researcher in New York, validated the computational results by finding that the tumors that were disappearing had more cells of the immune system among their structure than those that were increasing in size.

The work of Alejandro Jiménez was on the cover of the journal Cell, and several scientific articles were also derived from it.

The Cambridge Cancer Research Institute in the United Kingdom brings together nearly 250 scientists who investigate practical issues of cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prevention.

The young Mexican said he was happy to have been chosen among so many high-level jobs, a distinction he never imagined receiving when he began his doctorate three years ago.

Currently, he is in a short stay at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, working on two projects: the evaluation of a model to detect tumor cells in mice, with the researcher Yardena Samuels; and studying unique ovarian cancer cells with researcher Itay Tirosh.

Source; Millenio

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