When Margaret Keenan, a 90-year-old woman from Coventry (UK), received the first COVID-19 vaccine, it was just 11 months after the discovery of the virus that caused it and less than 9 months after a pandemic had been declared. It was the 8th of December 2020 and biomedicine was setting an all-time record. By comparison, it took 5 years to develop and approve the Ebola vaccine and 7 years for measles. This unprecedented speed was made possible by a combination of factors, including exceptional funding and global cooperation, but one of these factors made all the difference: RNA technology.

Far from being a one-off solution, this breakthrough has opened the door to a new generation of therapies based on RNA (a key molecule in essential processes such as protein synthesis) that are revolutionising medicine by offering more versatile,

“Clinical trials aren’t only a tool for research but also represent a real possibility of treatment for patients who’ve exhausted many other options”. This is the premise with which Elena Garralda, Director of UITM-CaixaResearch at VHIO, validates each of the new therapies promoted by this research unit.

One example of this is the clinical trial for the European project PragmaTIL, led by VHIO. With the participation of 12 institutions from 6 countries, including “la Caixa” Foundation, this trial has treated the first patient with an innovative immunotherapy. Its aim? To improve the care of people with resistant tumours, reducing the treatment’s toxicity but without it losing any efficacy.

The immune system is one of the great achievements of evolution. It detects and responds to viruses, bacteria, parasites, tumour cells and even attacks by inert objects. Similarly, our efforts to understand and decipher how our own immune system works is also one of humanity’s great achievements. A clear example of this is the fact that, in the last 50 years alone, vaccines have saved 154 million lives according to the World Health Organisation.

Today immunology, the branch of biomedical science that studies the immune system, is going much further. It’s redefining biomedicine, paving the way for new advances in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of all kinds of diseases, from cancer to neurological disorders.

Tuberculosis is one of humanity’s oldest infectious diseases and the one that has caused the most deaths throughout history. In the last 200 years alone, it has claimed the lives of more than a billion people and is still the most lethal infectious disease today.

To address this major global health challenge, more and more progress is being made in prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The only vaccine available for the disease was developed in 1921 but there are currently 14 new vaccine candidates under clinical development, getting closer to being tested on humans.

There are social, economic and scientific challenges to eradicating tuberculosis but also promising advances that offer hope for the future.

Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia and, despite its huge impact, there’s still no effective cure. Its impact on society is huge and it has been calculated that, by 2050, the number of cases of Alzheimer’s will have tripled, rising from the current 1.2 cases in Spain to 3.6 million. As the disease advances, there’s progressive neurodegeneration that affects not only memory but also the ability to relate to others and even the individual’s own identity.

For years, it was believed that the brain damage associated with Alzheimer’s, especially in the regions essential for memory, only occurred when two proteins were present: amyloid beta and tau. However, this hypothesis could be about to change.