The president of BBVA and the BBVA Foundation, Carlos Torres Vila, has reaffirmed the foundation's commitment to the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in Barcelona and the teams working there to "address various tumor pathologies in an increasingly effective manner". He expressed this during a day with the teams from the laboratories of the Comprehensive Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunology Program (Caimi) at VHIO and its director, Josep Tabernero.
During the meeting, the latest advances in addressing tumor pathologies were presented, and the support of the BBVA Foundation for VHIO over the past 13 years to develop advanced therapies and facilitate patient access was reaffirmed. Torres Vila praised the Caimi teams collaborating on this project and highlighted the importance of the alliance with VHIO.
Additionally, he acknowledged the valuable human, scientific, and medical capital in Catalonia and emphasized the relevance of collaborations between the public and private sectors. The president of BBVA expressed confidence that the teams at VHIO will continue to achieve significant advances in diagnostics and therapies to address different tumor pathologies more effectively.
The Caimi program, created in 2018 with the backing of the BBVA Foundation, aims to identify the immune system's response mechanisms to cancer and leverage these responses to generate more effective treatments. Tabernero emphasized that the support of the BBVA Foundation through the Caimi program has been fundamental to its success.
The program has made significant advances in immunotherapy, such as the development of a non-invasive method to identify tumor lymphocytes in patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancers, as well as the development of its own cell therapies. Additionally, promising results have been obtained with experimental therapies based on TIL and CAR-T cells that show a strong antitumor response.
In summary, the collaboration between the BBVA Foundation and VHIO has been crucial for progress in the research and development of advanced cancer therapies, aiming for continuous improvement in the approach to different tumor pathologies globally.
