The aim of cancer research is to improve understanding of all aspects of the disease, including deepening our understanding of the biology of the tumour, developing new treatments, analysing the efficacy of diagnostic tests and performing studies aimed at prevention and early diagnosis.

Although important advances have been made in recent years in our understanding of the origin and evolution of cancer, their implementation in healthcare takes too much time. The Translational Oncology Unit (TOU) was established with the objective of facilitating the incorporation into clinical practice of new advances in molecular biology and the technology developed in this field.

The Translational Oncology group’s objective is to conduct highly scientific applied research in such a way that basic research can be rapidly translated to clinical practice. In other words, cancer patients at La Paz University Hospital benefit almost immediately from the results of research conducted by their own physicians.

The main lines of study are based on tumours with the greatest incidence and impact on survival, such as lung, colorectal, breast and ovarian cancer, although other types of neoplasms have been incorporated such as gastric and renal cancer. A series of fundamental objectives have been established for these neoplasms that can be summarised as early diagnosis, molecular classification for therapeutic goals and the search for individualised treatments. The majority of TOU projects have as their primary objective the search for predictors of susceptibility or resistance to anticancer agents and the search for prognostic factors related to the evolution of the tumour.