PCM Group awarded the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland (RAMI) award for best Oncology manuscript in 2022.

The Precision Cancer Medicine Group (PCMG) won the RAMI award for best Oncology manuscript in 2022 for their paper ‘Identification, validation and biological characterisation of novel Glioblastoma tumour microenvironment subtypes: implications for precision immunotherapy’.

This paper, published in annals of Oncology, established 3 novel GBM subtypes based on distinct features of the GBM Tumour microenvironment. These subtypes were shown to predict response to immunotherapy and may therefore guide personalised treatment strategies for GBM patients.

This study was led by PCMG members Dr. Kieron White and Dr. Kate Connor. Prof Annette Byrne, Head of the RCSI Precision Cancer Medicine Group, RCSI Department of Physiology and Medical Physics and RCSI Centre for Systems Medicine was Senior author and Lead investigator for this project.

These findings result from a major collaborative initiative which also involved clinical colleagues from the National Centre of Neurosurgery, Beaumont Hospital Dublin (Ireland), members of the GLIOTRAIN brain tumour research consortium (INSERM and the Paris Brain Institute ICM, VIB-KU Leuven Centre for Cancer Biology, The Jackson Laboratory Erasmus MC), and several clinical collaborators from leading US brain tumour research centres.

The study was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSC) ITN initiative (Grant Agreement 766069, ‘GLIOTRAIN’) and the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the MSC Doctoral Networks grant agreement No 101073386 (GLIORESOLVE). The authors also acknowledge funding from Brain Tumour Ireland which established the Beaumont Hospital Brain Tumour Biorepository.

Dr. Kieron White attended the RAMI awards evening, hosted at RCSI. This was a lovely evening and really highlighted the impressive and impactful research taking place in Ireland. We were delighted to receive the prestigious RAMI medal for the ‘Oncology’ category.

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