25.7 million in support for basic, clinical and translational biomedical research projects
The ‘la Caixa’ Foundation has selected 29 new biomedical research projects of excellence with a high social impact as part of the CaixaResearch call for proposals for Health Research 2024, endowed with 25.7 million euros, to be carried out in research centres, hospitals and universities in Spain and Portugal.
The call, to which 580 basic, clinical and translational research proposals were submitted in this seventh edition, is especially aimed at tackling health challenges in different areas: infectious diseases (with 7 projects selected), oncology (6), cardiovascular and metabolic diseases (5), and neurosciences (5). In addition, 6 other selected initiatives will develop enabling technologies in one of these fields.
Among this year's selected projects are, for example, projects aimed at exploring new strategies to tackle the bacteria that cause tuberculosis or to combat heart disease; to improve understanding of obesity-associated liver disease; to develop a synthetic retina to restore vision in cases of blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa; to understand how the parasite that causes sleeping sickness manages to invade tissues; to generate human organs in animal hosts from stem cells; or to develop a replica of the ecosystem of a colon tumour on a chip to study the efficacy of immunotherapies.
The grants involve financial support of up to 500,000 euros for projects submitted by a single research organisation and up to one million euros for projects submitted by consortia of between 2 and 5 research organisations. All of them will have up to 3 years to execute their research.
This year, the 29 projects selected are led by scientists from 11 Spanish and 6 Portuguese centres. The consortium projects have the collaboration of research groups from the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, Italy, Israel and Australia.
CaixaForum Madrid hosted the award ceremony, which was attended by representatives of the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, such as the Deputy Director General, Juan Ramón Fuertes; the President of the Scientific Committee, Javier Solana; the Director of the Area of Relations with Research and Health Institutions, Ignasi López; the Foundation's trustee and Honorary President of Banco Português de Investimento (BPI), Artur Santos Silva, and the member of BPI's Social Responsibility Committee, José Pena do Amaral. Also in attendance were the president of the Luzón Foundation, María José Arregui, and the president of the Board of Directors of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), Madalena Alves, as well as the researchers leading the projects.
In the words of the Deputy Director General of the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, Juan Ramón Fuertes, ‘this ceremony is intended to be more than just recognition of the winning projects. We want this to be an opportunity for researchers to connect with each other and to foster scientific synergies and collaborations with a goal that unites us all: to build the future of health together’.
A competitive and collaborative call
The call is carried out in collaboration with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), a public body linked to the Portuguese Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation, which is providing 2.4 million euros to subsidise 3 of the 9 Portuguese projects selected in this edition. It is also supported by the Luzón Foundation, which, together with the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation, is subsidising a project on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
CaixaResearch for Health Research is a competitive call for proposals that relies on international experts of great prestige in their fields of study to select the projects with the greatest scientific excellence and social impact. Since the start of the programme in 2018, the total amount of the call has been 145.7 million euros for 200 projects, 137 of them led by Spanish teams and 63 by Portuguese research groups. This is currently the most important philanthropic call for research in biomedicine and health in Spain and Portugal.
Researchers who wish to apply for a grant in the 2025 call can submit their projects until 20 November this year. As a novelty, in the next edition, initiatives focused on paediatric minority diseases and type 1 diabetes will have the opportunity to receive specific funding in the framework of collaborations with the Sant Joan de Déu Research Foundation and the Breakthrough T1D Foundation, respectively.
