”la Caixa” Foundation devotes more than 23 million euros to 33 new biomedicine and health research projects in Spain and Portugal

The fifth 2022 CaixaResearch Call for Proposals in Health Research will provide funding for 33 new cutting-edge biomedical research projects in the two countries, with grants of up to one million euros per project.

The call is aimed at basic, clinical or translational research initiatives of excellence and great potential impact that address health challenges in the fields of cardiovascular, infectious and oncological diseases, and neuroscience, as well as projects to develop enabling technologies in these fields.

The initiatives selected include, among others, projects to regenerate heart tissue after a heart attack; to decipher the impact of ‘jumping genes’ on tumour proliferation; to study how the gut microbiota influences loss of control of intake in obesity; to create a new technology to purify the air of respiratory viruses; and to develop therapeutic nanotechnology that can halt the progression of Parkinson’s disease.

The ”la Caixa” Foundation CaixaResearch Call for Proposals is organised in partnership with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal, which subsidises 3 of the 13 Portuguese projects selected. The Luzon Foundation also cooperates by co-funding a project on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Since the programme was first launched in 2018, the organisers have devoted nearly 95 million euros to 138 research projects selected by a committee of international experts.