The Area of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases mainly focuses its research activity on gastrointestinal oncology and genetics.
Colorectal cancer is the most commonly occurring tumour and second in mortality in most developed countries, both in men and women. The prognosis of patients with colorectal cancer depends on when and how the disease is diagnosed. An early diagnosis can mean years of life, so it is important to develop preventive measures that entail identifying the population at risk of developing this disease.
The research undertaken enables the subject to be tackled as a whole, including its prevention, identification of its genetic causes, early diagnosis and treatment.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the neoplasms with the worst prognosis in humans, and is a priority disease in healthcare systems worldwide. Due to the current lack of treatment options, the challenge of researching further to help us find more effective therapies remains.
Work in this Area is also aimed at identifying new therapeutic targets for cholangiocarcinoma, hepatocarcinoma and gastric cancer.
Furthermore, the research work carried out here deals with other digestive diseases such as Helicobacter pylori pathology, inflammatory bowel disease, and chronic liver disease of different aetiologies (alcoholic, infectious, etc.).
To this effect, it is worth pointing out that a non-invasive technique for diagnosing haemochromatosis has been developed, involving measuring the iron overload by means of magnetic resonance, which has resulted in a patent.
The genetic predisposition to gastrointestinal diseases is studied in different areas (inflammatory bowel disease, microscopic colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, etc) in conjunction with the analysis of gut microbiota composition.