The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded one of its prestigious ERC Consolidator Grants to Doctor Amaia Cipitria, leader of the Bioengineering in Regeneration and Cancer group at the Biogipuzkoa Health Research Institute and Ikerbasque researcher. This grant has obtained funding of 2,350,000 euros that will be used to develop the DORMATRIX project whose main objective is to model breast cancer latency as a collective emerging phenomenon using biomaterials and microfluidics systems.
This grant that has been granted to Dr. Cipitria will serve to develop new devices and generate new knowledge about the invisible phase of breast cancer latency prior to clinical metastasis, which offers a window of opportunity to delay or prevent metastasis. In the words of Dr. Cipitria “I am very excited about this project and tremendously grateful to my research team, former team members, Biogipuzkoa colleagues, collaborators and colleagues from the scientific community, supervisors and mentors throughout my career, and my family. Without the support of so many people this would not have been possible. And of course, very excited about the research that DORMATRIX will allow us, with the vision that in the future the new technologies developed and the knowledge generated will allow us to advance in the development of new therapies to delay or prevent metastasis."
Furthermore, this grant endorses the excellent scientific career of Dr. Cipitria. Amaia Cipitria studied engineering from the University of Navarra-TECNUN and completed her doctorate in Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). She later worked at the Queensland University of Technology (Australia), at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin (Germany) and the Max Planck Institute (Germany); and joined Biogipuzkoa in 2021 as an Ikerbasque Research Associate. Her great research work translates into numerous articles in scientific journals and leading several national and international research projects.
The aid granted by the ERC rewards scientific excellence and cutting-edge research in Europe. For example, last year, 10 of these grants were granted to projects presented by Spanish researchers in the area of physical sciences and engineering, out of a total of 88 proposals. In fact, there have been few Consolidator Grants obtained by biomedical research institutions in Spain since these grants began to be granted. Furthermore, in the last 15 years, 11 Consolidator Grants have been awarded in Euskadi. All these data underline the excellence of the proposal made by Dr. Cipitria.
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