Sponsor a researcher

Your collaboration can make a difference in the progress of the solution to treat cancer with advanced medicines.

Given the potential of cancer research projects developed by the team of researchers led by Dr. Osvaldo Podhajcer, and the difficult situation in Argentinean science to afford the high costs of scientific research, we invite you to sponsor a researcher fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Therapy of the Leloir Institute.

The AFULIC sponsorship program is completely open to potential sponsors. It will be possible for those interested in becoming a sponsor to establish a direct contact with AFULIC authorities and with Dr. Podhjacer to find out details of the ongoing investigations at the LMCT. We offer that each sponsor be in charge of donating the money to the selected fellow directly to Leloir Institute that will a tax-deductible receipt from the Leloir Institute. The sponsor will receive timely reports of the investigations the fellow is involved in. We also offer that each scholarship bears the name of the person / family / company that sponsors it.

The incidence of new cancers in Argentina is more than 115,000 new cases annually, with similar percentages in men and women.

Oncolytic immunotherapy (OI) revolutionized cancer treatment ; currently, the aim is to combine different types of immunotherapeutic drugs with complementary mechanisms of action. During the last 20 years the LMCT led by Dr Podhajcer has been involved in the developing of cutting edge technology in OI based on engineering oncolytic viruses to attack tumors. Viruses are “armed” with immunostimulatory genes that can induce a secondary, tumor specific attack driven by the immune system. Armed viruses exacerbate specifically the immune attack that might lead, in combination with other state of the art biologics, to cancer cure.

Dr. Podhajcer and his research team engineered  oncolytic adenoviruses (OAV) to specifically infect and replicate only in cancer cells without affecting the normal organs. As mentioned, arming genes can exacerbate the tumor-specific immune response, obtaining a unique form of medication that works by initially attacking the tumor followed by a secondary vaccine-like medication that exacerbates an immune response against cancer.

Viral platforms developed at the LMCT had attracted the interest globally and Unleash Immuno Oncolytics, a US-based start up has licenced a patent from the LMCT that had attracted additional investment from a Japanise pharma company, Oncolys. This first adenoviral platform is intended to be used clinically in ovary cancer as the first indication.