Dr. Antonia Ávila Flores, researcher at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, recipient of the Rafael del Pino oncology research grant, continued in 2011 with the research project "Role of the DGK enzyme in tumour transformation: tumour suppression or proto-oncogene".
The use of specific inhibitors for this enzyme has, in the experiments carried out in this research, succeeded in stopping the growth of tumours in mice that had previously been inoculated with cancer cells. These results indicate that the DGK enzyme is a good target for the development of anti-tumour therapies.
The research aims to assess the role of some of the signalling pathways determining malignant transformation on DGK expression.