The CaixaResearch Institute, Spain's first research center dedicated to immunology, will begin its scientific activity in 2025. This was announced yesterday by Isidro Fainé, president of the “la Caixa” Foundation, at the ceremony to lay the first stone of the new institute. .
When the works are completed at the end of the decade, the center that is being built in Barcelona next to the CosmoCaixa museum will have more than 20,000 square meters in which some 40 research groups and around 500 people will work.
“Immunology is a cornerstone of modern medicine. (...) It has paved the way for the development of new therapies that are transforming the treatment of countless people," declared Josep Tabernero, scientific director of the CaixaResearch Institute, who will combine the position with his position as director of the Institute of Vall d'Hebron Oncology (VHIO).
Among the medical specialties that immunology is transforming, Tabernero highlighted cancer, where immunotherapies have opened the way to successfully treating patients for whom there was no option ten years ago. He cited infectious diseases, with the example of messenger RNA vaccines offering new possibilities for prevention. He also highlighted autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis or rheumatoid arthritis, where therapeutic advances can be made if we better understand how the immune system acts. And he did not forget neurodegenerative diseases, where the role of immunity is now beginning to be known.
As the immune system interacts with all the organs and tissues of the human body, Tabernero argued, “it cannot be studied in isolation” but rather “it must be studied from a multidisciplinary perspective (...) in a rich ecosystem that favors the exchange of ideas.” The CaixaResearch Institute, he highlighted, will be “a pioneering center in Spain, the first that will place immunology as the umbrella to study some of the most urgent challenges of our society.”
The project, which has been personally promoted by Isidro Fainé, will require an investment of around 100 million euros, which will be entirely contributed by the “la Caixa” Foundation. The center is being built on the north side of Ronda de Dalt on land owned by the banking foundation. The works include the construction of a new square on the Ronda de Dalt that will connect the institute with the CosmoCaixa museum. The cost of the urban planning action will be assumed by the “la Caixa” Foundation, which has also committed to enabling a public green area of 1,200 square meters at the back of the center as an access point to the Collserola Natural Park.
Antoni Ribas, an oncologist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a world leader in cancer immunotherapies, has agreed to join the project as president of the Scientific Advisory Board. This is a key position in scientific institutes to make strategic decisions, specify which lines of research are prioritized and help select the scientists who join.
The work schedule foresees that the first three research groups will begin their activity in 2025, something that will be possible thanks to the modular construction of the institute, which will allow work to begin in some spaces before the work on the entire building is completed. In the following years, between three and five new research groups could be incorporated per year until reaching full activity in the middle of the next decade. The works are expected to be completed in 2028 or 2029.
For the city of Barcelona, “this center, and others linked to biology or medicine, will represent a very important qualitative leap in the next four or five years,” congratulated the mayor, Jaume Collboni. “It is talent that will distinguish our city in the future. (…) The new Barcelona of science is beginning to see the light.”
Tabernero has already initiated contacts to recruit the first researchers who will join the center. These are top-level scientists in the field of immunology who will arrive at the new institute from both Spanish centers and other countries.
Likewise, it is planned to establish collaborations with the other four large biomedical research centers financed by the “la Caixa” Foundation: the IrsiCaixa institute, directed by Bonaventura Clotet at the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital in Badalona; the VHIO institute run by the Tabernero himself in Vall d'Hebron; the BarcelonaBeta research center linked to the Pasqual Maragall Foundation and specialized in Alzheimer's; and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a reference in tropical diseases and environmental epidemiology.
