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25/06/2026 - General information

Dr. Toni Celià-Terrassa Awarded a European Union ERC Advanced Grant to Develop New mRNA Therapies Against Breast Cancer

The grant, worth €2.5 million, will support a five-year project aimed at advancing a new generation of mRNA-based therapies to combat breast cancer. In the Life Sciences domain, only four projects from Catalan research institutions were selected.

Dr. Toni Celià-Terrassa, Principal Investigator and Head of the Cancer Cell States and Metastatic Immunity Research Group at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRIB), has been awarded one of the European Union's prestigious ERC Advanced Grants. The grant provides €2.5 million to develop a project focused on generating new therapeutic strategies for breast cancer.

The project, named PLASTWIRE (Re-wiring Tumor Immune-Evasive Plasticity with mRNA Therapy), will explore over the next five years the possibility of modifying the immune-evasive cellular states of tumour cells. Tumour heterogeneity is one of the main drivers of treatment resistance and therapeutic failure.

Dr. Celià-Terrassa's team aims to "therapeutically control cellular states, particularly tumour plasticity, by using mRNA-based therapies to modulate the transcription factors that regulate them, thereby controlling their plasticity." These tools could make it possible to reprogram tumour cells so that they acquire a more uniform molecular profile, making them easier for the immune system to recognize and therefore more vulnerable to treatments such as immunotherapy.

Although the research will initially focus on breast cancer, the knowledge and tools developed could eventually be applied to other tumour types. The ERC Advanced Grant will also help consolidate and expand the multidisciplinary team responsible for carrying out the project.

ERC Advanced Grants: Driving Frontier Research

More than 3,300 proposals were submitted in this year's ERC Advanced Grant competition, and only 319 projects from across Europe were selected to share nearly €840 million in funding.

These grants, considered among the highest recognitions of scientific excellence in Europe, are awarded to established researchers with outstanding track records. They support pioneering, high-risk, high-gain projects with the potential to open new frontiers of knowledge and generate a significant impact on science and society.

ERC Advanced Grants are awarded by the European Research Council (ERC). Established in 2007, the ERC is Europe's leading funding organisation for frontier research.

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