There are different ways to classify cancers: for instance, by the organ (or tissue) in which they originate, and by the type of cells they involve. Cancers can be solid (tumour-forming) or liquid (blood cancers).

Using the first method yields more than 200 different types of cancer. In alphabetical order, the most common are: bladder cancer, breast cancer, colon and rectal cancer, endometrial cancer, kidney cancer, leukemia (blood cancer), liver cancer, lung cancer melanoma (skin cancer), non-Hodgkin lymphoma, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and thyroid cancer.

In 1975 (International Women’s Year), the United Nations recognised March 8 as International Women’s Day, but did you know that the date has been important to women’s rights since 1908, when hundreds of female workers in New York demonstrated to form their own union and demand the right to vote? Each year, this date reminds us to strive for a fairer society, regardless of gender.

When we hear about someone having been diagnosed with “stage IV” cancer, most of us know this is very bad news. It is the most advanced overall cancer stage.

Classifying – or staging – a cancer is paramount to determining the cancer’s prognosis (its likely evolution) and to choose the most appropriate treatment. A misclassified cancer can lead to wrong treatment options, including undertreatment or overtreatment.

Scientists and doctors at the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon, have joined efforts to reduce the toxicity of so-called “neoadjuvant chemoradiation” – the combination of chemotherapy plus radiotherapy – for the treatment of rectal cancer. If further confirmed, their results, published a few months ago in the journal Frontiers in Oncology, could in the not-so-distant future help many patients with rectal cancer, especially the more elderly and frail ones.

Champalimaud Foundation (Fundação D. Anna de Sommer Champalimaud e Dr. Carlos Montez Champalimaud), a private, non-profit research institution in Lisbon, Portugal, is looking for a Senior Technician to join our team at the Champalimaud Research Program. 

The selected candidate will

Develop and use behavioral tracking systems combined with computational approaches and Drosophila neurogenetics to analyze the impact of neuronal and cell specific molecular manipulations on foraging computations.

Research Field

Neurosciences

It’s been over 20 years since neuroimaging studies – using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a widely-used technology to capture live videos of brain activity – have been detecting brain-wide complex patterns of correlated brain activity that appear disrupted in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders. These patterns form spontaneously, even at rest when no particular task is being performed, and have been detected not only in humans but also across mammals, including monkeys and rodents.