Aside from Raquel Oliveira and Carlos Ribeiro, who conduct their research at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência and Champalimaud Foundation, respectively, 56 other EMBO Members have been elected this year, coming from 15 different Member States of the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC), EMBO’s intergovernmental funding body.

A portion of human gut – just removed from the abdomen of a colon cancer patient and opened in half so as to give access to its inner mucosa, – sits on the countertop. A technician starts to scan it with the tip of an optical fibre, hovering over the surface of the sample without touching it. On the scanned zones, streaks of various colours, as if the tissue is being “painted” by the laser beam coming out of the fibre optic. 

The Champalimaud Foundation and the IAEA are thus starting a partnership for the development of research, treatment and diagnosis of oncological diseases. The collaboration focuses on the areas of radiation oncology, diagnostic medical imaging, nuclear medicine and medical physics.

The BALANCE project, from the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Lab at Champalimaud Research, will focus on medulloblastoma, one of the most common malignant brain tumours in children, and aims to “discover to what extent the developing brain is plastic and capable of compensating for the disturbances caused by the formation of a tumour, while maintaining its normal development and function”, as those responsible for the study say.

Researchers from the Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory at the Champalimaud Foundation, in Portugal, strive to understand how social context influences the individual's response to threats. 

Previously, they have shown that when fruit flies in a group are faced with an inescapable threat, they lower their defences compared to when alone. They further observed that if the other flies freeze, then so will the individual; when the group starts moving again, the individual quickly follows. Being in tune with the surrounding flies seems to bring security.

A study performed by the team of haematologist Cristina João, who leads the Myeloma and Lymphoma Research Group at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, suggests that it may be possible, in a near future, to diagnose and monitor the progression of multiple myeloma (MM) by simply using a blood sample. Their results were published today (21/06/2022) in the journal Frontiers in Oncology.

On June 8th, at 19h00, the Champalimaud Foundation opens the exhibition 'Insight Inside', the latest work by Clo Bourgard, in which the artist questions how our inner world brings us closer to nature and the environment, through pieces of art made exclusively with recycled materials.

If you were a kid in the 80s, or are a fan of retro video games, then you must know Frogger. The game can be quite a challenge. To win, you must first survive a stream of heavy traffic, only to then narrowly escape oblivion by zig-zagging across speeding wooden logs. How does the brain know what to focus on within all this mess?