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Scientific

‘La Caixa’ Foundation promotes a biomedical project with the participation of the CiMUS of the USC with nearly a million euros

  • María José Alonso's group collaborates in this study led by CNIO that promotes a therapeutic strategy to combat heart disease.

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, so that they can 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 those selected this year is a project led by Guadalupe Sabio, from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) and carried out in consortium with María José Alonso, from the Centro Singular de Investigación en Medicina Molecular y Enfermedades Crónicas (CiMUS) of the University of Santiago de Compostela; Hesham Sadek, from the Carlos III National Centre for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) and Mónica Giménez Marqués, from the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the University of Valencia. The project receives a grant of 999,920 euros from the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation to develop a new therapeutic strategy to combat heart disease.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that 17.9 million people died in 2019 as a result of cardiovascular disease, representing 32% of all deaths worldwide. Of these, 85% were due to heart attacks and strokes.

The heart, key to this group of disorders, is the organ with the highest metabolic demand and requires enormous flexibility to adapt to daily changes. Any alteration in its metabolism increases the risk of heart failure. In this sense, this project will study the mechanisms involved in cardiac metabolism, which will open the door to identifying new therapeutic strategies.

In previous studies, the team has identified a key protein in the oxygen-sensing mechanism of mitochondria in heart muscle cells, and preliminary data suggest that modulation of this sensing mechanism could provide protection against cardiac damage. In this project, the team will evaluate the therapeutic capacity of nanoparticles designed to eliminate precisely this protein in the context of cardiac hypoxia and myocardial infarction, with the aim of elucidating whether this is a viable strategy for combating heart disease.

 

A competitive and collaborative call

The call is carried out in collaboration with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), of the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, which is providing 2.9 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).

The grants involve financial support of up to 500,000 euros for projects presented by a single research organisation and up to one million euros for projects presented by consortia of between 2 and 5 research organisations. All of them will have up to 3 years to carry out their research.

CaixaForum Madrid hosted the award ceremony yesterday, 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, and the trustee of the Foundation and Honorary President of the Banco Português de Investimento (BPI), Artur Santos Silva. Also in attendance were the president of the Luzón Foundation, María José Arregui, and the president of the FCT Board of Trustees, Madalena Alves, as well as the researchers leading the projects.

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.