A research related to bone metastasis in breast cancer has been awarded with the II Valdés-Salas Prize for Applied Biomedicine. Doctor Roger R. Gomis and the company Inbiomotion have been awarded by the jury of this international prize, presided over by the biochemist at the University of Oviedo, Carlos López-Otín.

The team led by Doctor Gomis has identified for the first time the expression of a gene that specifically predicts the risk of breast cancer patients developing bone metastasis. The jury considers that the findings of Roger Gomis' team "will make it possible to develop clinical applications of notable interest".

The decision taken by the II Valdés-Salas Prize for Applied Biomedicine, organized by the Valdés-Salas Foundation, has been announced this morning by the Rector of the University of Oviedo, Vicente Gotor; the President of the jury, the professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Oviedo, Carlos López-Otín; and the secretary of the jury, Joaquín Lorences.

The findings of the research suggest that Roger Gomis' team have found a new therapeutic target to prevent and treat bone metastasis in patients suffering from breast cancer. This gene acts as a unique biomarker with specificity to select patient who can benefit from the use of agents in processes of bone metastasis. Clinical trials are being conducted in patients although the results are not conclusive yet.

Doctor Gomis and his team do their research at the Institut for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) in Barcelona and their findings have had an important impact on the creation of Inbiomotion SL. The company has incorporated important investors for its development and with an initial investment of two million euros. Inbiomotion SL was born as a spin out resulting from the collaboration between the IRB and the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA).

The Valdés-Salas Prize for Applied Biomedicine emerges with the idea of recognizing a research which has been successfully used by a company, thus awarding a close collaboration between the business and scientific worlds to obtain greater efficiency in the process of production of already existing products or for the development of new ones.

Roger Gomis: a brief cv

Roger R. Gomis (Barcelona, 1974) is Doctor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Barcelona. Since 2007, he has conducted research at the Institut for Research in Biomedicine at the University of Barcelona. Before, he worked in a team led by Joan Massagué at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA). His publications can be found in highly prestigious specialized journals and he is one of the founders of the company Inbiomotion SL.