For the first time, two Spanish scientists have managed to chain together four consecutive research projects awarded by the . The aid from this independent body of the European Union is considered the elite of science within the continent, and also outside it.
Obtaining one of these grants is only within the reach of the best scientists. Not only countries from the European Union compete for them, but also nations associated with powerful research systems, such as the United Kingdom or Israel. The success rate is 9.6%.
In the last call, in 2025, whose results have just been announced, Spain has achieved historic results with a record of 29, aimed at already established scientists. This places it in fourth place globally behind the United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland, and ahead of countries that traditionally surpassed it, such as France, the Netherlands and Italy. In 2024 Spain was eighth with 14 scholarships in total. In 2008, the first year these scholarships were awarded, it was ninth, with three. In this call, Spain receives a total of almost 82 million euros, 46 million more than last year.
The biochemist from Madrid, 67 years old, has just received his fourth project advanced consecutive, something unique in Spain, and extraordinary in Europe, since only three other scientists have achieved it.
“We have gone from being a country in which science was just another activity, in the best of cases, to being at the first level in the world,” explains Serrano. After directing the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona for 15 years, the scientist has returned to focus on research as head of his own group in this center, one of the best in the country.
The Barcelona biologist, 55 years old, explains that getting one of these grants is the most difficult step in a researcher’s career, because here you compete “with the best laboratories in Europe.” The researcher, head of the colorectal cancer department at the Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona, adds: “In Spain there is still little money for research.” In other countries with more resources such as the United Kingdom or Germany “this aid may no longer be as essential, but here it allows us to move to another category,” he adds.
A factory inside the lung
Serrano’s new project, financed by the ERC with 3.3 million euros, is to create a “living pill” against , which registers the highest global mortality, with almost two million deaths each year.
In the arsenal of new anticancer drugs there are some that are more effective than conventional treatments, but that cannot be used due to their toxicity and side effects. Serrano’s idea is to target these drugs, or new versions of them, selectively at tumors, and not at healthy tissue. To do this, it has created modified variants of the bacteria Mycoplasma pneumoniae. Researchers will modify the genome of these organisms so that they cannot cause disease, and will load them with deactivated versions of the aforementioned drugs.
These live pills are administered with an inhalable spray. Each dose can contain about 10 million bacteria. Once they reach the lungs, these microbes can only survive by consuming waste material from the tumor cells and, in doing so, they release the drug they carry, which would be activated at that moment. “We start with a very stupid bacteria, because it only has 680 genes, and we make it very effective,” Serrano summarizes. The team compares it to installing a drug factory inside the tumor.
The technology will be tested as a proof of concept in mouse models of lung cancer. If promising, these developments would provide a final avenue of treatment when already approved approaches, such as chemotherapy and immunotherapy, fail. In addition, Serrano points out, these designer bacteria could be used against , a disease associated with aging that has no cure.
Direct cancer evolution
This is the fourth time it has received recognition from the ERC, first with an S scholarshiptartingdedicated to young scientists at the postdoctoral level, and later with two Advanced previous. Their goal in this fourth project is to understand and combat one of the most fearsome capabilities of cancer: to change and evolve to be immune to drugs and be able to invade other organs causing metastasis. This process is the cause of nine out of 10 deaths from cancer
Batlle’s project focuses on the so-called tumor heterogeneity. This means that within a patient’s cancer there are different populations of cells capable of executing different programs, and thus acquire different properties. Among them are resistance to drugs and the ability to nest in other viscera.
Batlle’s new project seeks to better understand the heterogeneity within colon tumors that have already caused metastasis. These tumors are “the ones that kill,” since the rest can be operated on and treated with the available drugs, the biochemist reasons.
A drug designed by Batlle against colon cancer is at the origin of a new treatment whose patent has been acquired by , a unique case for Spanish biotechnology. This drug selectively attacks tumor cells that display a molecule known as LGR5 on their surface. The new idea is to try to reduce the genetic heterogeneity of tumors and direct their cells towards a specific type that could be eliminated with this drug, or similar ones.
The origin of the project is a recent study in which Batlle’s team discovered how some colon tumors become resistant to one of the most promising drugs against pancreatic cancer, designed to inhibit . “There is always a group of cells that can escape therapies and develop metastasis,” explains Batlle.
The project will use patient-derived, three-dimensional models that reproduce key features of human tumors. Using these models, the team will screen drugs to identify those capable of reducing tumor heterogeneity and determine which state they direct the cells towards. The most promising combinations will be validated in experimental animal models. The project has financing of 2.5 million euros.
Among the other 27 Spanish proposals selected by the ERC with its highest distinction in all branches of knowledge, there is everything from research on the role of the hippocampus in memory and action, to the change in the magnitude of current fires, to the gender division in the manufacture of perishable technologies during Prehistory.
