The group led by Irene Marco-Rius at IBEC is part of GLIOLIFE-AECC, a project funded with €10 million by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) and its Scientific Foundation to increase survival in people with glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive brain tumour in adults. The IBEC team will lead the consortium’s innovative radiology line, which will use an advanced imaging technique to study the tumour’s metabolism without the need for invasive procedures.
Glioblastoma is a tumour that originates in glial cells, which support neurons in the brain. It grows rapidly and infiltrates healthy brain tissue, which makes it difficult to remove completely with surgery and means it tends to recur after treatment. Even with standard treatment, which combines surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, median survival is between 12 and 15 months from diagnosis, and only around 5% of patients are still alive five years later. Moreover, there has been little therapeutic progress over the last 20 years.
GLIOLIFE-AECC, selected in the Reto AECC 70% Supervivencia 2026 call – the Association’s largest grant to boost research into cancers with low survival rates – aims to improve prevention and develop new, effective therapies, with an approach that puts patients at the centre. The consortium is led by Joan Seoane, from the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), and Juan Manuel Sepúlveda, from the Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, and brings together teams from more than 22 centres in 12 Spanish provinces, as well as a network of 24 hospitals. IBEC will receive €250,000 for its participation in the project, which will run for five years.
A technique to observe tumour metabolism
IBEC is involved in the area of the project devoted to characterising glioblastoma non-invasively, which combines liquid biopsy with advanced imaging techniques. Within this area, the group led by Irene Marco-Rius (Molecular Imaging for Precision Medicine) will be responsible for implementing hyperpolarised magnetic resonance imaging (HP-MRI). This technique increases the sensitivity of the magnetic resonance signal more than ten-thousand-fold, making it possible to track metabolic processes in living organisms in real time.
Hyperpolarised MRI allows us to observe how the tumour uses nutrients and how that metabolism changes when it responds, or fails to respond, to treatment. In GLIOLIFE-AECC, we want to fine-tune this technology in glioblastoma models so that it can make the leap to the clinic in Spain
Irene Marco-Rius
Using this technique, the team will study the metabolic alterations caused by the tumour, with the aim of defining imaging biomarkers of disease progression, assessing response to treatment and identifying new therapeutic targets. In the future, this knowledge could help to monitor how each tumour evolves and to guide treatment decisions, avoiding high-risk procedures such as surgical biopsies wherever possible.
The work will be carried out in preclinical models: animal models with patient-derived tumours. Although hyperpolarised MRI has already been tested in early clinical studies, it is still an emerging technology in Spain. The team’s goal is for it to be ready to begin testing in patients by the end of the project.
“Hyperpolarised MRI allows us to observe how the tumour uses nutrients and how that metabolism changes when it responds, or fails to respond, to treatment. In GLIOLIFE-AECC, we want to fine-tune this technology in glioblastoma models so that it can make the leap to the clinic in Spain”, explains Irene Marco-Rius, the group’s principal investigator at IBEC.
IBEC’s participation in GLIOLIFE-AECC reinforces its commitment to research at the interface between engineering and the life sciences aimed at addressing unmet clinical needs, in collaboration with hospitals and research centres across Spain.
