José Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute creates Clínic-UB Campus, a research reference in the fight against leukaemia

From left to right: Dr Francesc Cardellach, Mr Josep Carreras, Dr Ciril Rozman, Dr Dídac Ramírez, Mr Albert Carreras and Dr Evarist Feliu.
From left to right: Dr Francesc Cardellach, Mr Josep Carreras, Dr Ciril Rozman, Dr Dídac Ramírez, Mr Albert Carreras and Dr Evarist Feliu.
Research
(11/04/2013)
 
Today, Thursday 11th April, Mr Josep Carreras, president of José Carreras Leukaemia Foundation and José Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute; Dr Dídac Ramírez, rector of the University of Barcelona, and Mr Albert Carreras, representative of Josep Carreras Leukaemia Foundation, signed a scientific collaborating agreement that will create the Clínic-UB Campus of José Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC) at the Faculty of Medicine of the UB.
From left to right: Dr Francesc Cardellach, Mr Josep Carreras, Dr Ciril Rozman, Dr Dídac Ramírez, Mr Albert Carreras and Dr Evarist Feliu.
From left to right: Dr Francesc Cardellach, Mr Josep Carreras, Dr Ciril Rozman, Dr Dídac Ramírez, Mr Albert Carreras and Dr Evarist Feliu.
Research
11/04/2013
 
Today, Thursday 11th April, Mr Josep Carreras, president of José Carreras Leukaemia Foundation and José Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute; Dr Dídac Ramírez, rector of the University of Barcelona, and Mr Albert Carreras, representative of Josep Carreras Leukaemia Foundation, signed a scientific collaborating agreement that will create the Clínic-UB Campus of José Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC) at the Faculty of Medicine of the UB.
 
The collaboration agreement sets up a five-year period (2013-2017) to achieve the full development of Clínic-UB Campus of IJC, located on a 250 square metres area at the Faculty of Medicine. Besides other facilities, IJC will provide this scientific campus with a molecular laboratory, a flow cytometry laboratory and a cryobiology one. Moreover, it will contribute to the development of the Animal House Service; in particular, it will build it (€ 870,000), and provide its scientific equipment (€1,690,000). IJC will also remodel some of the facilities that it shares with the UB in the fields of microscopy, proteomics and genomics to ensure an optimum use.
 
“The scientific environment which surrounds Instituteʼs three campuses is excellent. Our project aims at increasing, integrating, sharing and promoting the quality of research. We are already doing it in the management field; we are joining and sharing facilities, and in the field of sciences we are integrating services which were available in several centres as a way to avoid unneeded duplications. The objective is that leukaemia and other blood cancers would be, one day, 100 % curable”, explained Josep Carreras, honorary doctorate from the University of Barcelona in 1989.

 

The rector of the UB, Dídac Ramírez, highlighted that “the scientific collaboration that has begun today, and is translated into the creation of Clínic-UB Campus of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute, strengthens the commitment of the University of Barcelona to maintain excellence criteria in every aspect of research. The University, aware of the major role it plays in generating and transferring knowledge, has to be ingenious and able to create new collaboration agreements with public and private entities in order to join efforts and resources in the field of scientific research, and in this case, in the fight against leukaemia. This agreement is a good example”.

 

The activity of IJC on this new campus will be focused on the development of basic and translational research projects in the field of stem cells (hematopoietic, normal and leukaemia) and cell therapy. Currently, IJC prioritize both research lines. The research on cell therapy with hematopoietic progenitors will be carried out within the Cell Therapy Program of the UB (TCUB), coordinated by the Faculty of Medicine, which includes preclinical and clinical research groups on several medical areas to promote translational research of excellence.

 

Dr Pablo Menéndez, awarded with an ICREA grant and director of GENYO (a research centre funded by the Andaluciaʼs Ministry of Innovation, Science and Enterprise, Andaluciaʼs Ministry of Health, the University of Granada and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer), will be the director of Research of Clínic-UB Campus. The team of Dr Menéndez, composed by ten researchers, will study molecular and cell mechanism of childhood acute leukaemias; the role of stem cells in the progression of acute leukaemias, myelodysplastic syndromes and multiple myeloma, and the development of animal models to test new treatments in order to prevent graft-versus-host disease, the main complication that can occur after hematopoietic progenitors transplants (bone marrow, peripheral blood or umbilical cord blood), among others.

 

The new director of Research of Clínic-UB Campus won an E.D. Thomas Post Doctoral Fellowship in 2006 and he carried out the project Developmental Impact of MLL-AF4 Leukaemic Fusion Gene on Human Stem Cell Fate at the Institute of Cancer Research - Chester Beatty Laboratories in London.

 

IJC, CERCA centre of the Government of Catalonia, has three independent but coordinated scientific campuses: Clínic-UB Campus of IJC, ICO-Germans Trias i Pujol Campus in Badalona, and Sant Pau Campus. Clínic-UB Campus of IJC, coordinated by Dr Álvaro Urbano Ispizua, profesor from the Department of Medicine of the UB, strengthens the scientific commitment of excellence in the field of haematology of the Faculty of Medicine of the UB and the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona set up by Dr Farreras Valentí and developed further thanks to the extraordinary work carried out by Dr Ciril Rozman, emeritus professor from the UB.