The Champalimaud Foundation has an experimental robot called Wingy, which runs Chat GPT and is expected one day to be able to greet patients who come to its Clinical Centre. But will Wingy replace the people currently in charge of that job?, asked Pedro Garcia da Silva, neuroscientist and Scientific Coordinator at Champalimaud Research, during his talk at the Champalimaud Cancer Nurse Conference, which took place at the Foundation on May 19th. 

Radiotherapy, or radiation therapy, is one of the pillars of cancer treatment. Radiotherapy preferentially uses X-rays to eliminate the solid manifestations of malignant tumours. 

It is estimated that 60% of cancer patients are treated with radiotherapy at a given phase of their disease, either as part of radical therapeutics (ablative) protocols or of symptomatic and palliative protocols.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer worldwide conferring high morbidity, mortality and costs. In Portugal, the scenario is no different. According to the World Health Organisation (Globocan), in 2020, 5415 new cases of Lung Cancer were diagnosed in our country, being the 4th most frequently diagnosed tumour in both genders (the 2nd if breast and prostate neoplasms are excluded), with greater relevance in males. 

The work, recently published in prestigious scientific journal PNAS, also shows that this molecule, which is transported by extracellular vesicles produced by tumor cells, directs these vesicles to the liver and lung, precisely the organs where it is common for stomach cancer metastases to appear. With these discoveries, the team contributed to the understanding of a new communication mechanism of tumor cells, thus identifying a potential new goal in developing targeted therapies to stop metastasis.