Advances in cancer treatment mean that more people than ever are surviving the disease. However, some of the most effective anticancer drugs—a class of medicines called anthracyclines—can cause serious damage to the heart. In some patients, this cardiac damage appears months or even years after treatment and has a major impact on quality of life.
Protecting the heart without compromising the effectiveness of chemotherapy is a major challenge in the field of cardio-oncology. Now, a team at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), led by Dr. Borja Ibáñez, provides new evidence that this can be achieved.
The study, published in Basic Research in Cardiology, demonstrates in an experimental model that the heart can be protected during anthracycline treatment using a simple, non-pharmacological technique known as remote ischemic conditioning (RIC), without reducing chemotherapy’s antitumor effectiveness.
RIC consists of controlled, brief interruptions of blood flow to a limb, usually achieved by applying a pressure cuff similar to those used to measure blood pressure. This stimulus activates protective mechanisms in the body that help the heart better withstand subsequent stressors, such as the damage caused by certain cancer treatments.
In the study, the researchers used anthracycline-treated, tumor-bearing mice to model the clinical situation in cancer patients. The results show that animals receiving RIC maintained better cardiac function during treatment. Importantly, this cardioprotective effect was not associated with increased tumor growth or reduced antitumor efficacy of chemotherapy.
The study’s first author, Anabel Díaz Guerra, a CNIC predoctoral researcher funded by the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC), explains: “Showing that the heart can be protected without compromising cancer treatment is essential to developing safer therapies.”
These results align with the translational vision of the group led by Dr. Borja Ibáñez—CNIC Scientific Director, cardiologist at Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and principal investigator in the CIBERCV network—which is currently coordinating the European clinical trial RESILIENCE. The trial is evaluating whether RIC can protect the hearts of cancer patients treated with anthracyclines and reduce long-term cardiovascular complications.
Senior CNIC investigator Dr. Laura Cádiz, co-supervisor of Díaz Guerra’s thesis, notes that the findings “reinforce the idea that simple, non-invasive strategies can play a key role in cardiovascular protection for cancer patients and open new avenues to improve their quality of life during and after treatment.
La entrada IMDEA Energía en Transfiere 2026: impulsando la innovación y la transferencia de conocimiento se publicó primero en IMDEA ENERGÍA.
The 13th LISA Cosmology Working Group Workshop will take place in Barcelona on June 1-5, 2026.
The workshop’s objective is to convene the LISA Cosmology Working Group community to examine recent advancements in cosmology pertinent to LISA. Its purpose is to kickstart collaborative projects and tackle unresolved issues in LISA cosmology.
Abstract: The wealth of data from the Euclid space telescope represents a major resource not only for cosmological studies but also for ultracool dwarf (UCD) science. Its Quick Data Release, covering 63 deg², has already revealed more than 5,000 UCD candidates. Over 10% of these have been spectroscopically confirmed, and more than half have available spectra showing characteristic UCD features. The sample spans spectral types from late M to late T. The first major data release (DR1), scheduled for October 2026, will cover an area 30 times larger, marking the transition of substellar science into the era of big data and enabling the establishment of robust photometric and spectroscopic standards. I will present the current UCD catalogue from the Q1 data release and future prospects with the Euclid data.
