Dr. Cristina Canal, awarded with an ERC Starting Grant

Dr. Cristina Canal, member of the research group in Biomaterials, Biomechanics and Tissue Engineering, is one of the 19 Spanish researchers that, this year, have been awarded a Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC).

The Grant, specifically created by the European Union in 2007 for funding excellent research in Europe, was granted to the project "Atmospheric Pressure plAsma meets biomaterials for bone Cancer HEaling (APACHE)". The proposal will evaluate an emerging technique, the atmospheric pressure plasma, as a tool for selectively treating bone cancer.  The main focus is improving the patient's wellness, by avoiding the side effects usually releted to traditional treatments, as chemotherapy. In Dr. Canal's words: “We have already shown proof of concept of the efficacy of the atmospheric pressure plasma treatments to induce the death of bone cancer cells, avoiding adverse effects on healthy cells”. According to the UPC's researcher, this ERC Starting Grant “will allow us to go further in the investigation of this promising therapy and in the understanding of the biologic mechanisms involved in its efficacy”.

Dr. Cristina Canal, currently a Ramón y Cajal Fellow, was previously awarded with a L’ORÉAL-UNESCO ‘For Women in Science Grant, is a member of the Management Comitee in three European Union COST Actions related with plasma (Biomedical Applications of Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Technology , Electrical Discharges With Liquids For Future Applications and AMICI: Anti-Microbial Coating Innovations to prevent infectious diseases) and is Co-IP in the project Print4Life: “Novel bioprinting strategies for bone regeneration cancer therapies” (MINECO, Gobierno de España). Moreover, she has been a member of the research team in several European, Spanish and Catalan projects and she is a teacher in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgic Engineering of the Technical Unviersity of Catalonia.