Catalonia will create an Advanced Therapies Center

The Government will create a National Center for Advanced Therapies (CNTA) to guarantee patients' access to these innovative medicines, coordinating the entire development process, from research and clinical trials to commercialization. Without the need to deploy a large infrastructure, taking advantage of existing resources, the new center is expected to be ready in February 2023 and will involve the incorporation of 20 workers.

Advanced therapies are based on human genes, tissues, or cells. Currently, this area of medicine focuses on tissue regeneration, the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, or cancer. It is also applied to pathologies for which no effective strategy is available. One of the recent successes of the Catalan hospital system in this field was the CAR-T developed by Hospital Clínic against leukemia, the first gene therapy created in Europe for this disease.

For the development of the new center, the Department of Health will coordinate with the Blood and Tissue Bank and Biocat, a foundation that coordinates and promotes the life and health sciences sector in Catalonia. The Generalitat will allocate its own resources to make it possible, about 60 million euros in the next three years, without ruling out that the Government or Europe may participate in the financing.

The resources will be used to adapt the facilities of the Blood and Tissue Bank, on Paseo Taulat, from where the tasks of the future organization will be carried out. The budget must also serve to finance competitive calls and grants to promote research.

With an eye on February of next year, a working group has been created, under the coordination of the Blood and Tissue Bank, which will define the details of the project. It is expected that the design will be worked on until the beginning of next year, when the budget for the first three years will also have to be approved and the necessary contracts established.

Boosting a business fabric that invoices 3,000 million

The National Center for Advanced Therapies will serve, primarily, to coordinate the different actors already working on the development of these types of medicines for serious diseases. According to the Department of Health, Catalonia has a very high scientific level, as well as a first-rate scientific and hospital network. All of this is accompanied by a business ecosystem made up of 50 companies dedicated to this sector ---30 startups and 20 corporations---. Advanced therapy companies record a turnover of more than 3,000 million euros and employ more than 6,000 workers, while emerging companies have raised more than 250 million euros since 2006.