As part of the Unstoppable against Leukaemia campaign, which formed part of 2015 Leukaemia Week (21-28 June), on Sunday 21 June more than 300 patients, who either have or have recovered from leukaemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma or another malignant blood disease, went out onto the streets to raise people's awareness about these diseases and to ask for their help in order to continue our research into them.

This event was held throughout 16 Autonomous Communities and 43 Spanish provinces. Joining the 300 patients and former patients were the families of 58 children and adolescents with these diseases, leukaemia being the most frequent cancer suffered by children. In Barcelona specifically, the families of 50 such patients and former patients met together in the Born district of the city.

This was the fourth year running that the campaign has been held and with every year that passes the event grows in importance. Last year 300 patients throughout the whole of Spain took part raising more than €50,000 through SMS messages of support. These funds were used to invest in a cell separator for the laboratories at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute. 

Dr Pablo Menéndez, scientific director at the Clinic-UB Campus from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research institute, has just published an article in the prestigious magazine Leukemia,where he explains how the team has identified the role ofthe DLL4 protein in blood cell production, which is a step forward in finding out what goes wrong in the cases in which pro-B acute lymphoblastic leukaemia MLL-AF4 +, which the team is studying, is developed.

The Josep Carreras Foundation will contribute €1,000,000 to Hospital Clinic to renovate and enlarge the Haemato-oncologic Clinical Trial Unit at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona.

This agreement opens the door to collaborations between scientists at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute and the doctors and clinical researchers from Hospital Clinic in Barcelona carrying outclinical, translational and basic research.

“Currently none of the existing treatment prevents the transformation to acute myeloid leukaemia and only delays the progression of the disease. The heterogeneity of MDS is the main barrier to the development of specific treatments”.

This month of March a new research team has joined the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC). It is Dr Mayka Sánchez’s team, focused on the study of iron metabolism.

A research team at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC) has studied the two groups of patients (ones HIV positive and the others HIV free) who received the same combined chemotherapy for B-cell aggressive lymphoma. The results of this study have just been published in the international magazine AIDS.