The Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), founded in 2006, is a leading European centre for personalised cancer medicine. Through a multidisciplinary, translational research model and strong international collaborations, VHIO rapidly translates laboratory discoveries into early clinical trials and new treatment opportunities for patients. Its research is organised into Biomedical and Clinical divisions, supported by transversal groups and services, and focuses on understanding cancer biology from molecular mechanisms to therapeutics to advance precision oncology.
Sara Gutiérrez-Enríquez is head of the laboratory of the Hereditary Cancer Genetics Group. She is an expert in hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) genetics and radiogenomics. Her research in HBOC focuses on advancing genetic testing through RNA- and whole-genome sequencing–based diagnostics and the interpretation of variants of unknown significance. In radiogenomics, she investigates germline genetic factors underlying normal tissue and tumour responses to radiation to enable personalised radiotherapy.
The VHIO TETRIS project team includes Carmen Moreno, Research Assistant, and Antón Vega i Méndez, Bioinformatics Researcher, from the Hereditary Cancer Genetics Group; Victoria Reyes López from the Department of Radiation Oncology at Vall d’Hebron Hospital; Goretti Mallorquí Fernandez from the Scientific Management Area; Lara Nonell from the Bioinformatics Unit; Victor Navarro Garcés from the Biostatistics Unit; and Arantxa Mena and Maialen Fernandez from the Communication Unit.
VHIO is WP Leader for WP4 – Genetics which aims at providing and estimating germline genetic markers from the retrospective (REQUITE), comprising approximately 2000 patients, and prospective (TETRIS) cohorts.
These markers include polygenic risk scores (PRS) for cardiac, pulmonary, and cancer-related traits, as well as clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP), which can predispose patients to heart, lung, and secondary cancer complications after radiotherapy. The biomarkers will be included in the risk scores developed in WP2 and in the CE-marked software tool (WP6). The same biomarkers will also be considered in prototyping digital twins (WP7).
VHIO is also part of WP1 – Coordination and Project Management, WP2 – Long-term Side Effects Modelling, WP5 – Transcriptomics, WP6 – Software Tool, WP7 – Digital Twins and WP8 – Cellular Sensitivity, WP9 – Prospective collection and WP10 – Dissemination and Exploitation.
