Joan Seoane and Eduard Batlle receive 'Josef Steiner' award for cancer research
Seoane specializes in brain cancer at Vall d'Hebron and Batlle in colon cancer at the IRB Barcelona. The will receive €400,000 for their research projects.

By Biocat
Scientists Joan Seoane and Eduard Batlle shared the Dr. Josef Steiner Cancer Research Award 2013, an award that recognizes their careers in cancer research and the role of stem cells in the tumor progression. The award from the Dr. Josef Steiner Foundation consists of €400,000 for each researcher for four years. The official awards ceremony took place on 11 October in the Swiss capital of Bern.
Joan Seoane, one of the most noteworthy Catalan researchers in oncology, heads up the Translational Research Program at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and is one of the founders of the spin-off Mosaic Biomedicals. He is an ICREA professor and principal investigator in the Gene Expression and Cancer Group, where he studies the most common brain tumor, the glioma. Using stem cells, Seoane seeks out trigger, recurrence and resistance mechanisms in this type of cancer. The compound inhibitors of tumor stem cells in brain tumors that his team has identified are being used in experimental treatments currently in clinical development.
Eduard Batlle, another benchmark scientist in Catalonia, adds the Josef Steiner award to his recent ERC Advanced Grant. He is currently head of the Colorectal Cancer Laboratory at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). His studies on stem cells that trigger colon cancer, which is one of the most deadly in the world, are noteworthy, as is the fact that he has identified the properties that allow this cancer to survive and grow while it colonizes the liver and lungs (the organs in which metastasis most frequently occurs in patients with colon cancer).
Both researchers, who have also won the Banco Sabadell Award for Biomedical Research in the past, highlight that “it is truly an honor to receive this award that has been given to some of the top figures in oncology in the world.” Also because “it recognizes Barcelona as the epicenter of excellence in oncology research as we have a large concentration of top-notch, world-renowned groups and centers.” Manel Esteller, Idibell researcher, also received this award in 2009.