Cap Roig gardens host a meeting to discuss the challenges of health research in Spain and Portugal
Some forty researchers from Spain and Portugal, leaders in their fields of knowledge, will meet in the gardens of Cap Roig to discuss issues affecting the world of health research.
The meeting, organised by the "la Caixa" Foundation on 28 and 29 September, aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas and proposals between some of the best scientists specialising in infectious diseases, neurosciences, oncology and related cardiovascular and metabolic diseases from both countries. All of them received a grant of between half a million and one million euros from the 2018 CaixaResearch call for Health Research to develop projects of excellence, which are now coming to an end.
With the support of expert moderators in the subjects discussed, such as the BBC science journalist Quentin Cooper or the scientist and entrepreneur in the world of biotechnology Maribel Bergés, joint reflection will be encouraged on issues surrounding research in biomedicine in health, such as innovation and the transfer of results into clinical practice, obtaining European funding or attracting talent, among other challenges faced by research centres in Spain and Portugal.
At this first meeting, some of the participating researchers will be the Director General of the Carlos III National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) and Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Physician-in-Chief of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Valentín Fuster; the director of the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS) and the Fundació Clínic per la Recerca Biomèdica (FCRB), Elías Campo, and the executive director and group leader at the Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM) in Lisbon, Maria Mota. Other notable names include Josep Dalmau, ICREA researcher and leader of the Pathogenesis of Autoimmune Neuronal Diseases group at IDIBAPS; Francisco Sánchez Madrid, scientific director of the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Hospital Universitario de La Princesa; and Fátima Gebauer, group leader and coordinator of the Gene Regulation, Stem Cells and Cancer programme at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), among many others.
Cap Roig will thus become a meeting place for the best national and international scientific talent, who will discuss different issues, such as enabling technologies at the service of health and how people with knowledge in different areas can collaborate to give the best of themselves; innovation and knowledge transfer to make research projects reach patients, or basic and clinical research, and how they can be combined.
For more than thirty years, the "la Caixa" Foundation has been promoting projects in the field of research and innovation in biomedicine and health that are carried out in research centres, universities and hospitals in Spain and Portugal. The entity currently collaborates with more than a hundred institutions to generate new scientific knowledge in the field of health and supports the work of more than 2,500 researchers on the Iberian Peninsula.
The "la Caixa" Foundation's Research and Health programme is one of the most important among those developed by philanthropic entities in Europe. In 2021, the entity chaired by Isidro Fainé allocated 36 million euros to different research and innovation projects in biomedicine and health that are carried out in research centres, universities and hospitals in Spain and Portugal.
Last year alone, researchers supported by CaixaResearch - the Research and Health branch of the "la Caixa" Foundation - achieved nearly 1,100 indexed scientific publications. In addition, as a result of the effort to achieve a good transfer of knowledge to the business world, 12 new biomedical companies were created and 21 patents were registered.
