Fundación Mutua launches new series of grants for medical research

In the coming months, twenty to thirty new projects will be added and will receive financial support through the twenty-first Health Research Grant Call funded by 2.3 million euroswhich the fund launched earlier this year and will resolve before the summer.

With this new call for 2024, the Mutua Foundation will once again support medical research projects in specialties such as transplantations targeting immunotolerance, bioartificial organs and organ preservation; oncology, focused on immunotherapy and cancer; traumatology and its consequences; rare diseases, limited to those that clinically manifest in childhood; and mental health with a focus on childhood and adolescent disorders.

Moreover, for the purpose encourage collaboration in networked medical research between autonomous communitiesThe appeal has a special category for funding projects carried out by groups of researchers from at least four different Autonomous Communities.

The clinical studies that are funded each year are selected by a scientific committee chaired by Dr. Rafael Matesanz, which also includes renowned experts in each field. The committee selects papers based on the criteria of principal investigator and team experience, scientific quality, feasibility, practical application, and social impact expected from the results.

All work funded by the Mutua Foundation Health Research Grants Competition is carried out in health research institutes at Spanish public hospitals, although the competition includes a special category of clinical research carried out by specialists from the medical team of Adeslas, a leading health expert. insurance company part of the Mutua group.

In 2023, with its twentieth appeal, the foundation contributed to the launch 26 new research papers from teams from 22 hospitals. from 9 different autonomous communities.

In this collection of 26 studies, there are two collaborations involving teams from at least four different autonomous communities. One of them, in the field of cancer immunotherapy, uses liquid biopsy is a test that analyzes genetic damage in tumor cells circulating in the patient’s blood.– identify genetic, epigenetic and gene expression changes in tumor samples from patients with small cell (small cell) lung cancer.

This type of lung cancer accounts for about 25% of the total and has the shortest life expectancy and worst response to treatment. Moreover, it is usually detected when it has already caused metastases.

The goal of this collaborative study is to improve early detection and find new treatments for this lung tumor.

Another collaborative study funded by the latest call is being developed in the field of traumatology to evaluate the effectiveness of drug in patients with head traumacerebral contusions and pericontusional edema in a prospective, randomized, double-blind, interhospital study.

This study follows on from previous research funded by the Mutua Madrileña Foundation and led by Dr Juan Pérez Bárcena from the Son Espaces Hospital in Mallorca, which confirmed that dexamethasone, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, is an effective treatment for head injuries. A global public health problem due to its enormous prevalence, high mortality and lack of treatment, which can be caused by a bad fall, blow or road traffic accident.

Health is one of the four activities of the Mutua Madrileña Foundation, which also deals with social activities, cultural dissemination and promotion of road safety among young people. At the heart of this healthcare focus is the support of medical research through the aforementioned Annual Health Research Grants Competition, as well as direct support from Spanish public research institutions such as the National Center for Cardiovascular Research.

To complete its healthcare support, the Mutua Madrileña Foundation develops “Momentum and Improvement” programs through which it funds functional treatments (physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc.) for children and adults with rare diseases, as well as minors with disorders. autism spectrum (ASD).

This is carried out through the Spanish Federation of Rare Diseases (FEDER) and the Madrid Autism Federation. Through these programs, he supports families living with one of these disorders who, without treatment, find better treatment through functional therapy.

Caregiver training

Similarly, concerned about the role of the caregiver, the foundation, in collaboration with the Spanish Confederation of Associations of Relatives of People with Alzheimer’s and Other Dementias (CEAFA), developed a training program aimed at training lay caregivers of patients with dementia. basic skills to carry out their work as accurately as possible, paying particular attention to treating the person with dementia with dignity and following self-care practices.

Following a pilot in 2023, the high level of satisfaction demonstrated by the 327 participants in the evaluations led to the expansion of this training program in 2024.

With these programs support for patients and their familiesIn the field of rare diseases, autism and dementia, the Mutua Madrileña Foundation is completing the work it has been doing in the field of health for more than 20 years.

New mental health support line for children and adolescents

The Mutua Madrileña Foundation launched in 2023, coinciding with its twentieth anniversary, a new direction of work in the field of mental health, to which it contributes both by funding medical research projects in this regard and other social initiatives to support affected groups. . In this sense, in the 2023 competition it has already funded the first four mental health studies aimed at studying various psychiatric pathologies in children and adolescents.

For example, one of these studies is looking at treatments for anorexia nervosa. Another project will look for objective biological markers that will help make an accurate and differential diagnosis between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder since the first outbreak.

This new commitment to mental health led him, together with the Spanish Confederation of Mental Health, to produce a report, “The State of Mental Health in Spain,” which was attended by more than 2,000 people and confirmed the deterioration that had been observed in the field of mental health. since the pandemic, with findings that four in ten Spaniards (39.3%) rate their current mental health negatively.