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At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm last month, F1000 Member Manel Esteller received the 2011 European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) Cancer Researcher Award. In this short video, taken at the meeting, Manel tells us about his work on the epigenetics of cancer.

Manel’s group demonstrated that many tumour suppressor genes are inactivated not by mutations in genes, but through epigenetic changes.

He is interested in the role of methylation as a cancer biomarker, as well as the roles of histone modification and non-coding RNA in cancer in prognosis. He is currently working on determining epigenetic profiles of human diseases—not just cancer but aging and neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s. His lab is also involved in the preclinical development of drugs that target epigenetic mechanisms, with the aim of getting them into clinical trials.

Sometimes technology goes faster than knowledge