Helena Gouveia, oncologist at the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) tells us about two important examples of collaborative endeavours between this Unit and CF’s research labs. Scientists and clinicians join efforts to do translational research/medicine – that is, to take recent scientific advances “to the patients’ bedside” as safely, quickly and efficiently as possible.

Zoom-In on Champalimaud: Ana Beatriz Machado

Accessing the so-called “metaverse” through augmented reality headsets connected to the internet can help breast cancer surgeons to locate a patient’s tumour, during surgery, by virtually superposing the patient’s medical images onto her physical body lying on the operating room table, explains Pedro Gouveia, surgeon at the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Foundation. With this in view, the Unit is already building a digital surgery lab, where artificial intelligence and computer vision will combine to give rise to the breast cancer surgery of the future.

Axillary lymph node dissection is a procedure to remove all lymph nodes in the armpit so as to avoid breast cancer recurrence. But, explains David Pinto, a surgeon at the Breast Unit of the Champalimaud Foundation, it causes complications – and, in 40% of the cases, it is unnecessary. Since comparative studies on alternative procedures are scant, the Unit is also participating in the European clinical trial AXSANA, which will provide results within two years.

Maria João Cardoso, coordinator of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Breast Unit Surgical team, and also in charge of the Cinderella Project, developed in this Unit - which recently received five million euros in European funding. In this video, she explains how important it is, nowadays, to consider not only the medical outcomes, but also the aesthetic aspects, when it comes to submitting women to breast surgery.

More on this project here.

Leonor Matos, Medical Oncologist at the Champalimaud Foundation’s Breast Unit, presents here the NEOPROGRAM, a project that will soon be launched in the unit, which was designed for patients who are going to receive chemotherapy or hormone therapy with curative intent. Its goal is to evaluate the benefits of different types of physical exercise for the patients’ quality of life and for tumour responses to the treatments.

In this video, Berta Sousa, an oncologist at the Champalimaud Foundation’s Breast Unit and one of the people in charge of the BOUNCE project in Portugal, talks about the results already obtained concerning the factors that influence resilience to the diagnosis and treatments in breast cancer patients.  She also evokes a study of the impact of treatments on cognitive function, specifically performed by the Breast Unit, whose results will be presented shortly.

What distinguishes the Champalimaud Foundation’s Breast Unit from other units in the same field? In this short video, Fátima Cardoso, who leads the Breast Unit at the Champalimaud Foundation, answers this question.

October is World Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Fátima Cardoso, who leads the Breast Unit at the Champalimaud Foundation, presents here a series of short videos that will be published all through this month of October about the Breast Unit, its clinical activities and its research projects.

The CaixaResearch Health Research Contest 2022 has selected 33 promising new biomedical and health projects promoted by research centres and universities in Spain and Portugal. Once again affirming that the “la Caixa” Foundation, in collaboration with BPI, supports projects of excellence that can have a positive impact on the health of citizens. 

Within this framework, it has allocated a total of 23.1 million euros to such projects – 20 Spanish and 13 Portuguese – that will be developed over the next three years.