BioCruces Bizkaia Health Research Institute (BC)

This fellowship must be completed not later than June 2025

BioCruces Bizkaia Health Research Institute (BC)

is a Health Research Institute of Bizkaia Region. BBHRI was established in 2008 and it aims to promote, unite and support the research groups to develop a quality translational research and enhance the effective innovation and collaboration with other organizations; all this in order to provide new tools, practices, and knowledge to contribute to the improvement of health care, population health, wealth creation, and economic development. Five important organisations in the Basque Country (Health Department of the Basque Government, Public Health Provider Organization (OSA), Basque Public University and Basque Foundation for Health Innovation and Research (BIOEF) and Foundation BBK. 

The legal agreement between BBHRI and the Basque Health System in fact provides the framework for the cooperation between the two institutions, with the goal of translating research results into medical practice. There are close to 900 professionals with complementary basic and clinical profiles divided into more than 60 research groups. BBHRI is taking part in close to 150 clinical trials and offers a long-running close relationship with the University of the Basque Country and other hospitals of the Basque Country.

Research proposals

Biocruces HRI is constituted by different research groups integrated in 7 research scientific areas. Each research group and area are supervised by a coordinator, being Dr. Mar Mendibe Bilbao, the Scientific Director of Biocruces, the scientific areas are the following:

• Covid 19 : Research on the molecular/genetic aspects, both of the virus itself and of genetic polymorphisms associated with clinical evolution. The approach is epidemiological, but also diagnostic and therapeutic.

• Primary Health Care, Prevention and Chronic Diseases: Primary healthcare provides a unique opportunity for clinical research at the population level focused on the promotion of health and primary, secondary and tertiary prevention of the chronic illnesses that are most common and which have the most effect on health, including cancer, cardiovascular diseases and mental disorders. The research groups work as well in Regenerative therapies, osteoarticular and tendon pathology.

• Autoimmune, Inflammatory and Infectious Diseases: we focus on tend to have an inflammatory basis and an environmental, infectious, metabolic, or autoimmune cause, and be chronic in nature. Translation of our results to clinical practice should be immediate, the main objective being to improve the prognosis and quality of life of our patients. Further, clinical research in this area should contribute to ameliorating the growing social and economic impact of these medical conditions
• Maternal Child Healthcare and Assisted Reproduction: The objective is to innovate and provide answers to the fertility problems, to improve the health of pregnant women and to increase the safety of the mother and child at birth. We focus our efforts on caring for foetal health, the analysis of congenital, and improving the diagnosis of certain genetic disorders, especially in relation to intellectual disability and diseases linked to the X chromosome. We aim to improve our understanding of paediatric cancer, especially brain tumours and genetic predisposition to cancer, and some rare diseases to develop better diagnostic methods and new treatments. Health problems of children and adolescents, in particular conditions related to prematurity and those associated with severe conditions or requiring urgent intervention.
• Biomedical engineering, Bioprinting and 3D. This research group works in the following area of research.

  -Autologous therapies (PRP) in joint pathologies: osteoarthritis and chondropathies.

  -Autologous therapies (PRP) in tendon pathology.

  -Cell therapy in joint and tendon pathology: mesenchymal fat cells Biology of platelet-rich plasmas (PRPs).

  -Modulating effect of PRP on inflammation.

  -Modulating effect of PRP on angiogenesis.

  -Effect of PRP on cell activation (fat mesenchymal, tendon cells, synovial cells).

  -Study of immunohistochemical, genetic and molecular cytogenetic markers in biopsies from patients with soft tissue sarcomas: diagnostic utility, relationship with prognosis and applicability in the monitoring of minimal residual disease.

  -Prevention of postoperative bleeding in massive resection surgery of bone tumors: Multicenter, randomized, open-label, parallel clinical trial with three treatment arms, evaluating the efficacy of topical tranexamic acid versus topical Evicel® and usual haemostasis.