The epigenetics laboratory of the National Cancer Research Center (Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas) (CNIO) published in Nature Genetics in 2006 the discovery of the mutation in an epigenetic gene in human cancer. Three years later, received the eleventh Esteve Foundation Research Award for an article in which they described the alteration of the HDAC2 gene, present in 25% of tumors of the colon, stomach and uterus of a special subtype.
The members of the jury that decided the recipient of the award, considered the article, out of all those that were entered for the prize, to be the best research in the field of pharmacology published by a Spanish author in an international journal during 2006 and 2007. The prize, awarded every two years and worth 18,000 euros, was presented on June 30 at the IDIBELL headquarters in Duran and Reynals Hospital, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, in the presence of its director general, and the director of the Esteve Foundation, together with the award-winning authors.
The title of the article was A truncating mutation of HDAC2 in human cancers confers resistance to histone deacetylase inhibition. It was the first to describe mutation of the HDAC2 gene, pivotal in the regulation of many other genes, such that its inactivation facilitates the generation of other alterations in oncogenes and genes that suppress tumors. The findings of these researchers could be useful for predicting which tumors will be more sensitive to tomorrow’s drugs used in chemotherapy of cancer, called histone deacetylase inhibitors.
