Alberto Hernandez Barranco and Rafael Blanco have been selected as the 2026 recipients of the prestigious EACR-Mark Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships.
This highly competitive fellowship, established through a partnership between the European Association for Cancer Research (EACR) and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, provides outstanding early-career scientists with three years of funding to advance groundbreaking cancer research in leading laboratories across Europe. Designed to support promising postdoctoral researchers at a critical stage in their careers, the fellowship aims to foster innovation, encourage international collaboration, and accelerate progress in cancer research by enabling talented scientists to pursue ambitious and high-impact projects.
“Supporting early-career scientists like Alberto and Rafael is central to our mission of accelerating research that transforms the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer,” says Ryan Schoenfeld, PhD, CEO of The Mark Foundation. “We are proud to partner with the EACR to empower these talented researchers as they work toward life-saving breakthroughs for patients.”
“We offer our warm congratulations to Alberto and Rafael,” Jane Smith, CEO of the EACR, commented. “Their projects focus on important aspects of cancer research and have potential to make important discoveries for the ultimate benefit of cancer patients. We are grateful to the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research for its support for EACR members and we look forward to launching a new call for Fellowships very soon.”
About Alberto Hernandez Barranco
Dr. Alberto Hernández is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Originally from Spain, he was trained in biotechnology and obtained his PhD in Molecular Biosciences from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 2023 with the support of a fellowship from La Caixa Foundation. During this time he worked in the Microenvironment and Metastasis research group led by Dr. Héctor Peinado at the Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO). There he developed his PhD Thesis studying the role of NGFR in lymphoproliferative and autoimmune diseases and was involved in different projects related to the role of the tumor microenvironement in melanoma metastasis.
His current postdoctoral research is focused on understanding innate mechanisms of immune suppression in brain metastasis by dissecting the role of interferon-gamma (IFNγ) in the perivascular niche through orthogonal approaches. The final goal of this project is to better understand why the immune responses and immunotherapy efficacy are impaired in the brain compared to primary tumors.
With the support of the EACR-Mark Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, he hopes to contribute finding alternative treatments to improve the outcome of brain metastatic patients.
“It is an immense honour to receive this fellowship from the EACR and the Mark Foundation,” Alberto says. “I really believe that there is no future without research, and this funding will be critical for the development of my postdoctoral project, hopefully contributing to better outcome for patients with such a devastating disease as brain metastasis”
Connect with Alberto on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
About Rafael Blanco
Rafael is a translational immunologist with interest in developing T cell–derived solutions to address unmet clinical needs. He earned his PhD in 2022 at the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (Spain), where he identified T cell–derived biomarkers for myocarditis and uncovered novel regulatory T cell subsets essential for cardiac repair after myocardial infarction, publishing as first author in The New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. A secondment at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology further strengthened his doctoral work, which received multiple national and international awards.
As an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM), his research focused on understanding γδ T cells within the solid tumor microenvironment and harnessing their therapeutic potential for cancer immunotherapy. He played a central role in the development of Delta One T (DOT) cells, a Vδ1-enriched γδ T cell–based therapy currently under clinical evaluation, demonstrating their preclinical efficacy in colorectal cancer (Nature Cancer) as a proof of concept for solid tumors. In close collaboration with industry partners, he drives the development and translation of next-generation γδ T cell–based immunotherapies, including CAR-γδ T cells and γδ T cell engagers.
As an EACR–Mark Foundation Fellow at GIMM, he is leading research programs aimed at optimizing γδ T cell–based therapies for colorectal cancer and accelerating their path toward clinical application.
Connect with Rafael on LinkedIn, Bluesky and X.
EACR Postdoctoral Fellowships
To find out more about the EACR’s Postdoctoral Fellowships, click here.
