The Mutua Madrileña Foundation has delivered today its twentieth call for Health Research Grantsendowed with 2.3 million euros, to 26 clinical studies that will be carried out in hospitals throughout Spain. Research will be carried out in the area of transplants, rare childhood diseases, traumatology, cancer immunotherapy, and child and adolescent mental health.
The award ceremony was chaired by the president of Grupo Mutua and its foundation, Ignacio Garralda, and was attended by the president of the Fundación Mutua Madrileña Scientific Committee, Dr. Rafael Matesanz, and the scientific researcher at the Center for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa (CSIC-UAM) and coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Global Health Thematic Platform (CSIC), Dr. Margarita del Val.
In its first 20 years of life, which the Mutua Madrileña Foundation celebrates this year, has already allocated 68 million euros to this annual call of aid with which it contributes to quality medical research carried out in Spain and which has served to launch more than 1,400 projects. In this twentieth edition, the foundation will support the work of research teams from 22 hospitals in 9 different autonomous communities.
he research projects have been selected by the foundation’s scientific committee and will be carried out in the areas of transplants, focused on immune tolerance and organ preservation (4 studies), traumatology and its sequelae (5 studies), rare diseases that manifest in childhood (4 studies), immunotherapy-focused oncology (5 studies) and mental health, focused on child and adolescent disorders (4 studies). Additionally, another 4 studies will be financed led by specialists from the medical staff of Adeslas, a leading insurance company in health insurance and belonging to Grupo Mutua.
In this selection of 26 studies there are two that are collaborative, in which teams from at least four different autonomous communities participate. One of them, in the field of cancer immunotherapy, will use liquid biopsy -a test that analyzes genetic lesions in cells from the tumor that circulate in the patient’s blood- to identify genetic, epigenetic and gene expression alterations in tumor samples of patients with small cell (small cell) lung cancer. This type of lung cancer it accounts for around 25% of the total and is the one with the lowest life expectancy and the worst response to treatment. In addition, it is usually detected when it has already originated metastasis.