Despite the advances in the treatment of malignant blood diseases, there are still many cases of leukaemia and lymphoma where the expected clinical response does not occur, or resistance to treatment arises. The emergence of immunotherapy has given hope to patients with tumours that seemed intractable. Drugs based on highly specific antibodies have been very successful and, recently, a new type of immunotherapy based on living cells has been developed. This is the so-called chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, CAR-T, in which the drug are T cells genetically engineered in the laboratory, which attack cancer cells with high accuracy and efficacy.

However, CAR-T treatments are expensive and not always work. The study led by Dr. Manel Esteller, ICREA Research Professor at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute and Chairman of Genetics at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona, would allow to predict the efficacy of this cellular immunotherapy in each patient by studying the epigenetics -the regulation and activity of genes-, not of the patient, but of the CAR-T cells themselves. This finding can be transferred to a more personalized treatment of people affected by leukaemia and lymphomas resistant to traditional drugs.

The Royal Academy of Medicine of Galicia has recognised this study and awarded Dr. Manel Esteller the prestigious Barrié Foundation research prize. This award distinguishes the best work of free subject in medical sciences in clinical application. The Research Awards Ceremony was held on 24 January, during the Inauguration of the Academic Year 2025 of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Galicia, at its headquarters in A Coruña.

The work of Dr. Esteller was coordinated by the Josep Carreras Institute and is a joint collaboration with the Sheba Medical Center in Israel, the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona and the Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome, all of them leaders in the clinical applications of this new treatment.

Dr. Manel Esteller graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Barcelona and received his doctorate with a specialization in molecular genetics of endometrial carcinoma from the same University. He was a postdoctoral researcher and associate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, USA), where he studied DNA methylation and its relationship with cancer. He led the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid and returned to Catalunya in 2008 to direct the Epigenetics and Cancer Biology Programme (PEBC) at the Bellvitge biomedical campus, and then to direct the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC) from 2019 to 2024, within the framework of the Research Centres of Catalonia (CERCA). Dr. Esteller's research has made it possible to understand the contribution of epigenetic alterations in human disease, especially cancer, and to develop biomarkers for early detection and new therapies.