Biocruces Bizkaia- BC

Biocruces Bizkaia (BC) is the Health Research Institute of the Cruces University Hospital.  It aims to promote, unite and support the research groups that make up the Institute to develop a translational research quality 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.

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 Castaño, the Scientific Director of Biocruces, the scientific areas to be covered are the following:

• 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 in this area design and evaluate innovative interventions to address the main determinants of health, including lifestyle and other risk factors associated with these illnesses. Primary care researchers focus on how to improve the quality of life of patients, their adaptive capacity and their self-care ability.
• Cancer: All aspects of all types of solid malignant tumours and blood cancers, from epidemiological characteristics to biological and clinical features are included. The aim of the different research units is to carry out research on cancer at the basic, applied and clinical levels. Given the nature of our institution as a healthcare provider, most of the activity is to be focused on translational research, promoting a rich and productive interaction between basic biomedical sciences and applied oncology, in order that results directly benefit patients and society as a whole.
• Endocrinology, Metabolism, Nutrition and Renal Diseases: Different research groups work together on the characterisation of the etiopathogenesis and the epidemiology of these conditions and the identification of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, seeking to translate scientific progress to patients. Diabetes, obesity, and coeliac disease are key areas in endocrinology and nutrition, and we focus on the genetic and environmental causes and on disease control, as well as new therapeutic approaches including prevention, new drugs and technologies, and cell therapy.
• 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
• Nervous Systems Diseases: Neurodegenerative diseases, epilepsy, demyelinating diseases (multiple sclerosis), stroke, and other neurological diseases account for a significant percentage of mortality and disability, with severe social consequences. Research groups will pursue in-depth work along established research lines such as the study of the causes of diseases, their genetic nature, clinical and behavioral profiles of patients, and the epidemiology of diseases. Research on clinical and pathological correlates by means of neuroimaging techniques that enable the assessment of brain functioning in normal and diseased states, as well as more detailed analysis of biological markers.
• 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.