Rita Fior uses zebrafish to do basic and translational research in cancer at the Champalimaud Foundation. A few years ago, having to deal with cancer in her family led her to design a test, based on her animal “model” – that would allow doctors to choose, among the available chemotherapeutic options, the best one for a given patient. How? Using the little zebrafish as “avatars”, as personalised “alter-egos” of the patients. Tumour cells from a patient are injected in the fish, generating the “avatars'' that will then be submitted to the treatment options available for that patient.

Interview with Oriol Parés and Bill Heald

A Fundação Champalimaud, enquanto instituição prestadora de cuidados na área da oncologia e centro privilegiado de aprendizagem, promove anualmente uma conferência multidisciplinar onde aborda transversalmente o que de mais inovador e diferenciador se faz em oncologia. 

Interview with Amjad Parvaiz

As a young man, Amjad Parvaiz, now 54, wanted to become a “big trauma surgeon”. So after graduating from university in his home city of Lahore, in Pakistan, he moved to South Africa to do his trauma surgery training there. While in South Africa, in 1995, he says, “one of my bosses took me aside and said to me: ‘if you want to do 21st century surgery, go and learn laparoscopy.

Interview with Paulo Fidalgo

Paulo Fidalgo, 66, says that he has “two loves” at the Champalimaud Foundation: gastroenterology and oncological risk assessment. So it does not come as a surprise that he is both a gastroenterologist in the Digestive Unit of the Champalimaud Clinical Centre and the head of the Risk Assessment and Early Diagnosis Programme at this Centre.