Caixa Impulse program promotes the creation of companies and products in the field of life and health sciences. The program supports innovative projects throughout broad stages of development: from initial validation stages to the point of attraction of private investment or the establishment of agreements with the industry. The program is divided into two different calls:

• CaixaImpulse Validate

CaixaImpulse Validate is an acceleration programme that provides support to early stage biomedical research projects to help them validate their asset and define their valorisation plan.

It offers up to €100,000 to create and implement a valorisation and commercialisation plan aimed at making use of protected or protectable assets resulting from research.

Deadline: 1st of March 2021

More information on the following link: Link

•  CaixaImpulse Consolidate

CaixaImpulse Consolidate supports highly innovative solutions to achieve investment readiness and move closer to commercialisation stages.

The call will provide financial support of up to 300,000 euros for a maximum of 24 months for actions directly related to recovery milestones to make the project ready for private investment, therefore closer to the commercialization stages.

More information on the following link: link

Next February 3 at 11 a.m. M. CET will hold an information session on these calls. Required prior registration: Registration link (here)

The crisis generated by the pandemic derived from COVID-19 in extreme contingency scenarios presents a terrible dilemma: first, it is to protect the health of citizens, although that can hibernate the economy and cause a reduction in income with unequal effects by socioeconomic gradient and by Regional Health Service.

In this sense, the Transversal Group in R + D + i in Health economics and health services management has obtained the concession of its project proposal “Stress or resistance test in the Cantabrian Health System, development of innovative digital technologies to model scenarios of greater health use and solutions of socio-economic and human impact against COVID-19” in the INN-VAL 2020 call of IDIVAL.

The study aims to explore various scenarios of increased health use and evaluate their effects and future compensations on the economic and social sustainability of Cantabria due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The stress or resistance tests are intended to demonstrate the solvency of the Cantabrian health sector in the face of a possible situation of general tension in its main key indicators. In addition, the costs (health and social) will be measured, based on the data available and the treatments for people diagnosed with COVID-19 (hospitalization and ICU, as well as cases of persistent COVID19 and sequelae).

In relation to the role that Primary Care must play in the post-confinement period, the Research Group is committed to prioritizing analysis and diagnosis. For this, from the perspective of geoprevention and spatial efficiency and equity, this project proposes to expand a Rapid Action Territorial Information System (SITAR-COVID19) to be used as a prevention tool and digital solution.

Finally, it should be noted that the socioeconomic impact and the need for resources may vary in the different patterns of health use and the strategies to be taken should consider possible compensations and needs. In addition, the interest from the strategic health perspective for Cantabria is fundamental, since it contributes to increasing efficiency in the use of available health resources, as well as facilitating the combination of alternative forms of treatment of the pending COVID-19 disease of the arrival of vaccines.

On November 20, the provisional resolution for the granting of subsidies for the “Infrastructure of Precision Medicine associated with Science and Technology (IMPaCT)” of the Strategic Action in Health 2017-2020 was published.

IMPaCT is an R + D + i action aimed at the implementation of Precision Medicine in the National Health System (SNS). The IMPaCT call consists of three programs closely related to each other, Predictive Medicine, Data Science and Genomic Medicine that will constitute an infrastructure that seeks to generate knowledge and the scientific technical bases to support the deployment of the national strategy of Precision Medicine in the System National Health.

Each program has a single beneficiary center at the state level that will act as the central node of the program and several collaborating entities distributed throughout the Spanish geography with a responsible researcher associated with each entity.

The three multicenter projects funded for each of the programs are:

• Predictive Medicine: Design and implementation of a large population cohort with clinical, epidemiological and biological data, measured at the individual level, which allows the representation of the entire population residing in Spain.

Aid financed with file number IMP / 00021 for an amount of € 13,999,997.00 and led at the national level by Marina Pollán Santamaria of the Consorcio Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER), the regional researcher being the researcher Luis Mariano López López, Director of Primary Care Nursing of the Cantabrian Health Service.

• Data Science: Development of a system for the collection, integration and analysis of clinical and molecular data aimed at improving the health of each patient, and which allows the secondary use of existing information in the SNS for the benefit of society with objectives public health, health planning and research.

Aid financed with file number IMP / 00019 for an amount of € 4,549,380.00 and led at the national level by Alfonso Valencia of the National Supercomputing Center, with the researcher Raúl Martínez Santiago, Coordinator of Systems and Technologies of Information from the Cantabrian Health Service.

• Genomic Medicine: Have the coordination infrastructures and protocols to carry out genomic analyzes and other “omics” data in an effective, efficient and equitable accessible manner throughout the national territory.

Aid financed with file number IMP / 00009 for an amount of € 7,249,990.00 and led at the national level by Ángel Carracedo Álvarez of the Center for Online Biomedical Research Consortium (CIBER), the researcher José Luis Fernández being responsible at the regional level Luna, head of the group “Cell Signaling and Therapeutic Targets in Cancer” at IDIVAL and Coordinator of Genetics at the Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital.

Of the two TEC-VAL contracts called within the Biosanitary Revitalization Plan Aid Program this year, of which only one was covered, IDIVAL once again announces a temporary internship labor contract for the training of support technicians in the Testing Unit Valdecilla clinics (“Tec-Val” Program).

The purpose of this program is to promote the professional practice and training of technicians in aspects related to research support in the field of the various IDIVAL support service platforms, which in this 2020 call are specifically addressed to the Testing Unit Valdecilla clinics.

Candidate Requirements:

Second cycle university graduates (official master or graduate). In all cases, they must be official Spanish qualifications and, if they have been obtained abroad, they must be officially approved by the deadline for submitting applications, in accordance with applicable regulations.

The contract may be concluded with those who are in possession of the required university degree, provided that, on the date of publication of this call, no more than five years have elapsed, or seven, when the contract is concluded with a worker with a disability, from the completion of studies.

The salary of the selected candidates will be 75% in the first year and 80% of the salary corresponding to the category of second-cycle university graduate in the second year. The internship contract that will have an initial duration of 12 months, counted from the date of incorporation, extendable for another 12 months, after evaluation of the activity of the contractor. The trial period will be two months.

Documentation to be submitted with the application:

a) Curriculum vitae in CVN format (reduced version FECYT)

b) Report on the proposed activities to be carried out by the candidate. It must collect the activities to be carried out by the candidate and include specific references to the Valdecilla Clinical Trials Unit.

c) Copy of DNI. Copy of valid passport, only in the case of foreign citizens not resident in Spanish territory.

d) Official academic certification of the studies carried out, with details of the subjects taken and the grades obtained.

e) Documentary accreditation of the curricular merits provided

Application submission deadline: From December 5, 2020 to January 5, 2021.

More detailed information on the call in the following BOC link: Official Gazette of Cantabria (download pdf)

On December 17, Antonio Fernández, M.D. Director, Business Development & Government Affairs of Johnson & Johnson, gives an online presentation under the title “Vaccines for COVID. A new challenge, a new development ”.

Antonio Fernández has a degree in Medicine from the University of Navarra and a graduate of the Executive Development Program of the Kellogg Management School, Northwestern University (Chicago, USA). In addition, he has received postgraduate training from the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), among others.

Throughout his 33-year professional career at Johnson & Johnson he has been Medical Director of Janssen in Spain and has also worked as Director of Clinical Research for the Janssen Research Foundation in Beerse, Belgium. He was subsequently appointed Executive Director and Global Leader of the Neurosciences area at Johnson & Johnson based in New Jersey, USA. He has also been responsible for the Neuroscience New Product Development (NBD) areas at Janssen EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). He is currently Director of Janssen Spain and is responsible for the Market Access and Government Affairs Areas.

In 2017, during the Johnson & Johnson Global Market Access Conference in Boston, USA Antonio was distinguished with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Exceptional Business Contribution. 

In 2019, Antonio announced his wish to retire early at the end of 2020, although he will continue to collaborate on specific projects with some teams from Janssen EMEA in the future.

In 2020, since the start of the development of the Janssen vaccine for COVID-19, Antonio has worked in coordination with the Global Clinical Operations teams in Spain and Global Regulatory Affairs in the USA to launch Phase Clinical Trials. 2 and 3 of the Janssen vaccine in Spain.

Contents of the presentation:

• Brief introduction to genetic vaccines for COVID-19

• Most relevant characteristics of the Janssen vaccine

• Presentation of preclinical and clinical data available in the public domain

• Some relevant aspects that must be taken into account when evaluating different immunization options against COVID-19

The session, 17 December at 8.15 am,  is organized by the Marqués de Valdecilla Research Institute within the Valdecilla General Sessions program that are held on Thursdays. 

Recently, a multicenter retrospective has been published in the American Journal of Transplantation in which six of the seven hospitals that perform lung transplantation in Spain have participated and which are the following: Vall d'Hebron (Barcelona), La Fe (Valencia) , Marqués de Valdecilla (Santander), Reina Sofía (Córdoba), Puerta de Hierro (Madrid), October 12 (Madrid), and A Coruña University Hospital (Coruña). The previous hospitals participated in this project except for the Reina Sofía Hospital in Córdoba.

The study collects retrospectively and a description was made of the data of the patients with lung transplantation in these six Spanish centers who have had SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection between 03/04/2020 and on 04/28/2020. A total of 44 patients with lung transplantation and COVID-19 were registered, of which 43 required hospital admission. All were diagnosed with CRP, 90.9% of them on the first attempt, and only 9.1% on the second attempt. The most frequent symptoms were fever (77%), dyspnea and cough (59%), and 73% of the patients had radiological alterations at the time of diagnosis.

93% of the patients received hydroxychloroquine. 31.8% received treatment with Lopinavir / Ritonavir, and as a complication, 71.4% of those who received Lopinavir / Ritonavir had increased levels of tacrolimus (the main immunosuppressant used), and as a consequence of this worsening of the renal function. 43.2% received treatment with Tociliziumab.

 A high percentage of patients, up to 84%, required some type of additional respiratory support, and up to 30% of the patients required admission to the ICU or intermediate respiratory care units.

As of 04/28/2020 (end of recruitment), 38.6% of the patients had died. The patients with higher mortality had a worse respiratory function before the SARS-CoV-2 infection, and had greater radiological alterations, higher levels of inteleukin-6 and higher D-dimer values ​​at the time of diagnosis than non-deceased patients.

In summary, the findings described suggest that lung transplant patients suffering from COVID-19 are very serious patients, with high rates of hospital admission, high need for respiratory support, high need for ICU admissions, as well as a high mortality rate, probably all favored by the high degree of immunosuppression of these patients.

These results are therefore especially important when assessing the severity of COVID-19 in lung transplant patients. On the other hand, regarding the specific treatments, it must be taken into account that the results are in the context of the care of patients with COVID-19 in the first wave (March and April), in which some therapies were used such as hydroxychloroquine and Lopinavir / Ritonavir, which are not currently used as scientific evidence has shown their lack of efficacy against COVID-19, so if the study is repeated today with other treatment regimens, they could be obtained somewhat different results.

Ref. COVID-19 in lung transplant recipients: A multicenter study. Am J Transplant. 2020 Oct 22. doi: 10.1111/ajt.16364. Online ahead of print. Berta Saez-Giménez 1, Cristina Berastegui 1, Miriam Barrecheguren, Eva Revilla-López, Ibai Los Arcos, Rodrigo Alonso, Myriam Aguilar, Víctor M Mora, Isabel Otero, Juan P Reig, Carlos A Quezada, Virginia Pérez, Manuel Valle, Rosalía Laporta, María Deu, Judith Sacanell, Carles Bravo, Joan Gavalda, Manuel Lopez-Meseguer, Víctor Monforte. PMID: 33089648 DOI: 10.1111/ajt.16364

The Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital Rheumatology Unit, in collaboration with the Valdecilla Health Research Institute (IDIVAL), has launched a study to determine the relationship between immunological inflammatory diseases and SARS-CoV-2.

Developed by doctors Ricardo Blanco, Miguel Ángel González-Gay and David Martínez-López, the objectives of this research in patients with rheumatological diseases with an immune cause focus on establishing the frequency and characteristics of the COVID-19 disease and on verifying the benefits or harms that immunosuppressive drugs can cause in the treatment of these diseases.

This study is unded by the Carlos III Health Institute through the extraordinary call for COVID-19 projects.  In general, patients with rheumatological diseases with an immune cause, due to their immune-based pathology and the different immunosuppressive treatments, are those who have a higher risk of infection.

In addition, they have pointed out that the treatments used for these diseases, such as corticosteroids, hydroxychloroquine, tocilizumab or anakinra, among others, have been widely used in the treatment of COVID-19.

Since the risk and severity of SARS-CoV-2 infection in these patients is currently unknown, the results of this study may also provide additional information on the role of these widely used drugs in the fight against such infection.

In order to obtain valuable data from an epidemiological point of view, this project is part of the Research Network on Inflammation and Rheumatic Diseases of the Carlos III Health Institute. In this way, the reference population of the study is not limited to Cantabria, but increases to about 2.9 million people.

So far, the Valdecilla researchers and IDIVAL have published two papers on rheumatic diseases of immune cause in the scientific journal with the highest impact factor in the specialty; 'Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases', focused on chronic arthritis (rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and spondyloarthritis) and systemic autoimmune diseases (lupus, vasculitis, Sjögren's syndrome).

In the first study, they observed a higher prevalence of COVID-19 in patients with systemic autoimmune diseases than in the general population, with the exception of systemic lupus erythematosus. In addition, patients with chronic arthritis in targeted biological and synthetic treatment have also had a higher prevalence of COVID-19, in contrast to patients with regular synthetic treatment.

In a second study, focused on the severity of COVID-19 in the global group of patients with diseases of immune cause, it has been detected that the risk factors for a more severe COVID in the multivariate regression study have been an age greater than 60 years, being a man and having a systemic autoimmune disease. This greater severity was not observed, however, in the group of chronic arthritis or with immunosuppressive, synthetic or biological treatment.

On 3^rd and 4^th September we invite you to Trieste at EuroBioHighTech 2020, the satellite event of the European Science Open Forum, the main European research event.

EBHT is a unique event dedicated to Smart Health and Innovation for Businesses.

The main players are: universities, investors, innovative companies and public institutions operating in the field of intelligent health.

Conferences, exhibitions, presentations of companies and projects, one-to-one meetings on the virtual platform; plenary session on research, education, finance and policies for health innovation.

You will have access to the virtual platform of the event until September 11, where you can follow all the speakers, look at the virtual stands and talk with the exhibitors, make appointments and make individual meetings.

The event is completely free and to access it is necessary to register at the following link:

https://live.eurobiohightech.it/register/visitors

Programme EuroBioHighTech (link)

IDIVAL presents the award for his research career to Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos and the award for health cooperation for development to Dr. Pedro Cavadas. The award ceremony will take place during the XIII Inter-regional Meeting on Legal Protection of the Patient organized by the University Menéndez Pelayo International and directed by Jorge Tomillo, Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Cantabria and Joaquín Cayón, head of the legal service of the Ministry of Health of the Government of Cantabria and head of the research group on health law and bioethics. Health will present the awards together with the Director of Management of IDIVAL, Galo Peralta .

After the delivery of this award, Dr. Rojas Marcos has delivered a keynote lecture on 'The impact of COVID-19 on individuals and society: lessons learned and challenges for the future'.

Dr. Luis Rojas Marcos specialized in psychiatry at Bellevue Hospital and New York University. Dr. Rojas investigated the effects of the language barrier on mentally ill immigrants who had difficulty expressing themselves in English. His studies were groundbreaking and showed that the language barrier distorts the communication of these immigrants, to the point that examinations performed by psychiatrists in English without the help of interpreters were unreliable and led to inaccurate diagnoses and erroneous treatment.

The studies of Dr. Rojas contributed to the creation of the Law of Interpreters in the Emergencies and created the Help Project (Project HELP), the first mobile medical service to attend and hospitalize seriously mentally ill homeless and the creation of the first programs specific mental health services for the Hispanic American, Chinese, Russian and Caribbean immigrant communities in the US.

Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, he has received numerous awards for his research work in psychiatry and for his contribution to society.

Currently, Rojas Marcos combines his academic work as a professor of Psychiatry at New York University with the management, as executive director, of Affiliate Doctors of New York.

This year, IDIVAL awards a second prize for his contribution and health cooperation to development to Dr. Pedro Cavadas.

Dr. Cavadas is a specialist in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and since 1994 he has been dedicated to microsurgical reconstruction using the most innovative treatments to provide solutions to patients considered inoperable or who have been left with very difficult to repair sequelae. Dr. Cavadas has received numerous awards and among his professional successes are several cases of limb transplants, being the first surgeon to transplant two hands and to convert a right arm into a left one.

It is worth highlighting the humanitarian work carried out by Dr. Cavadas, thanks to his Foundation created in 2003, he provides modern reconstructive surgery to underprivileged patients in African countries.

The Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital has been one of the 3 Spanish hospitals selected to participate in an international study investigating a vaccine, Ad26COVS, against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is responsible for the COVID-19 disease. Thanks to the collaboration of healthy volunteers, the aim is to evaluate the immune response to different doses of the vaccine, its safety and the duration of the immune effect at 4 and 6 months.

This trial will take place in the coming weeks internationally. To carry it out in Spain, the clinical trial units of Hospital Valdecilla, Hospital La Paz and Hospital La Princesa, in Madrid, have been selected, thanks to the high level of their technical and human resources and their experience in highly complex trials.

This study has the authorization of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), dependent on the Ministry of Health of the Government of Spain, and has been evaluated and approved by a National Drug Research Ethics Committee. Its execution requires the recruitment of healthy volunteers, aged between 18 and 55, who have not been infected with the virus during this pandemic.

Vaccine clinical trials

Vaccines are biological preparations that generate immunity against a disease by stimulating the production of antibodies within the body, so that it is able to recognize the pathogen as a threat and destroy it. They are used to prevent or reduce aggressiveness to future infections.

The Valdecilla Clinical Trials Unit has been operating in the heart of the Hospital since 2013 and has solid resources and experience in trials for the study of treatments for many different diseases.

In this unit, which has been recognized by the ISO 9001-2015 quality certification, the clinical and research capacity of the Valdecilla Hospital and the IDIVAL Health Research Institute go hand in hand. So far, it has participated in about 250 clinical trials led by professionals from 17 different specialties.