Salk Institute Professor Diana Hargreaves was named a 2025 All-Star Translational Award Program grantee by the V Foundation for Cancer Research. The award comes as a recognition of Hargreaves’ exceptional success with her previous V Foundation grant in 2016. For the All-Star project, she will receive $1 million and work with collaborator Gregory Botta, an associate professor at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, to improve immunotherapy—a treatment that utilizes the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer—in patients with pancreatic cancer.

The new location of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute will be based at Sant Joan de Déu and will focus on research into paediatric leukaemia. This new programme is the result of an agreement between the Institute, the Josep Carreras Foundation, and the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute, which will enable the development of joint institutional strategies and initiatives, and promote collaborative research in all its phases.

Cancer cells interact with their neighborhood — which scientists term the tumor microenvironment — in many ways, including obtaining extra resources needed to fuel their unchecked growth. Like a fishing trawler deploying its net, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells reform their cell surfaces to grab additional nutrients from the jelly-like substance between cells called the extracellular matrix.

This cellular scavenging process — known as macropinocytosis — affects the area surrounding the tumor, making the connective tissue stiffer and preventing immune cells from reaching the tumor.