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.

For many years, corneal injuries or disorders have been one of the leading causes of blindness across the world. The two physician-scientists have decisively changed and accelerated the path to the treatment of these problems. A deeper understanding of the transparent outer layer of the eye, as well as the possibility of ensuring an improved and more cost-effective approach to corneal surgery and transplantation, are essential to tackle this plight.

Chemotherapy is the most conventional treatment against cancer. It uses medication to kill cells, and in particular cancer cells. But it does not target cancer cells specifically. It can be used by itself or in combination with other treatments, such as radiotherapy (see below) or surgery, to make them more effective.

Chemotherapy is usually administered intravenously at a hospital in the course of several sessions, but it can also consist of tablets taken at home. It can include one drug or a combination of drugs.

The statistics for pancreatic cancer are sobering. With a five-year survival rate of only 9%, incidence of the most common type, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), is growing and projected to be the second cause of cancer deaths by 2030. Surgery remains the most effective treatment, yet for 70-80% of patients, surgery is not a viable option. Understanding pancreatic cancer at the cellular and subcellular level is essential for developing therapies that can buy patients more time.
 

One of the hallmarks of multiple myeloma (MM), a cancer of the bone marrow and one of the most frequent haematological cancers worldwide, is the disruption of the patients’ immune system, which allows the cancer to progress. Now, a study performed by Cristina João, who leads the Myeloma and Lymphoma Research Group at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, and her colleagues, shows how so-called extracellular vesicles (EV’s) released by multiple myeloma cells can drive the disruption of the immune system.

Adjuvant cancer treatments are the most conventional, most classic therapeutic approach to cancer. Here, the first step is usually surgery to remove the tumour, followed by chemotherapy, radiotherapy or other additional treatments to consolidate the surgery’s results.

Zoom-In on Champalimaud: Ana Saraiva Ayash

Early diagnosis aims to detect cancer in its early stages when it is potentially curable. This can apply not only to people who already have symptoms of a given cancer, but also to those who, not having any symptom, are subject to known risk factors that justify this approach.

Mr. P. started to be followed at the smoking cessation consultation of the Champalimaud Foundation in mid-2018. He had been a smoker for 33 years, and in 2018, he smoked around one pack of cigarettes a day. His first attempt to quit failed, but Mr. P. never quit the consultation and never gave up on quitting smoking. He finally achieved his goal in mid-2020 through a multidisciplinary approach (including psychology and psychiatry consultations) – and, to this day, has never smoked again.