AmicsUAB is honouring her for her cancer research and her contribution to new therapeutic strategies against the disease.
Laura Soucek has devoted her career to finding new ways to fight cancer. After earning a degree in Biology from Sapienza University of Rome and a PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology, she specialised in Myc, a protein involved in almost every human tumour.
Following a period at the University of California, San Francisco, she joined the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in 2011, where she leads a research group and the experimental therapeutics programme. She is also an ICREA research professor and an associate professor at the UAB.
Her team designed Omomyc, a molecule that blocks Myc, and showed that targeting this pathway can halt cancer with only mild side effects. To bring this breakthrough to patients, she founded Peptomyc, a research spin-off she leads as CEO. In 2022, her drug, OMO-103, successfully completed a Phase I clinical trial.
The AmicsUAB Board of Directors sees in her career an outstanding example of scientific excellence, knowledge transfer and commitment to the social impact of science.
For all these reasons, we are delighted to welcome her this year as one of our Amics dels Amics.
