The immune system is transversal in all diseases. There is no pathology that does not benefit from a better understanding of immunology, and precisely there is where the new CaixaResearch Institute focuses, which has just been inaugurated as the first research center specialized in immunology in Spain and Portugal, and one of the first in Europe.
Researchers have already started working from the new CaixaResearch Institute. In front of Cosmocaixa, the new center was officially inaugurated this Friday, with a visit from King Felipe VI, along with the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa; the Minister of Health, Mónica García; the Government delegate in Catalonia, Carlos Prieto; the president of the "la Caixa" Foundation, Isidre Fainé, and the director of the "la Caixa" Foundation Research Centers and deputy director of CaixaResearch, Mireia Castanys.
Four years after laying its first stone, the center, which will have 20,000 square meters, already has one of its two buildings in operation. In it, 26 scientists have already been installed, distributed in six research groups. They are only a small part of the nearly 500 professionals who will work from the center once it is fully operational, in about 45 research groups. The forecast is that the center's professionals will double by the end of 2026, and will grow progressively year by year, reaching 500 around 2032.
To launch the new research institute, the "la Caixa" Foundation has allocated about 100 million in investment for the works and for scientific equipment, in an operation that had 80 million from the European Investment Bank (EIB). Now, CaixaResearch has a budget of 10 million euros for 2026, destined for talent acquisition and to continue equipping the center, determined to consolidate itself as a reference center in immunology.
The guardian of balance
And the immune system goes much further than the conception it had until a few decades ago: it is not only that system in charge of defending the body from external agents, such as viruses and bacteria, but it also faces internal threats, such as tumors. And even more: it is the system that allows maintaining the balance of all body tissues, and repairing them when they are damaged, like the system that maintains the architecture of the organism. "It is the silent guardian that patrols the organism and maintains its balance,"has highlighted oncologist Josep Tabernero, who leads the Scientific Council of the center: "When this system fails, when it does not respond, or responds too much, diseases appear ranging from cancer to autoimmune, cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases."
Thus, the complexity of the immune system lies not only in how to respond to these threats, both internal and external, but also in when: when it activates and, just as or more importantly, when it turns off. How does it achieve this without damaging its own tissues? Thanks to an orchestra of cells directed by the thymus, an organ often forgotten between the sternum and the heart. From here, numerous questions arise: What are the mechanisms of the immune system? Why can the response to a vaccine vary depending on the person? Why does immunotherapy work in some cancer patients, but not in others? How does the immune system influence the way we age? Many of these questions do not yet have definitive answers, and they will seek them from the CaixaResearch Institute.
Networked ecosystem
The research center will not do it alone: will work in coordination with other centers, especially those that already receive structural support from the La Caixa Foundation, such as IrsiCaixa, for infectious diseases; the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO); the Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center of the Pasqual Maragall Foundation; the Institute for Global Health; the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute and the Portuguese Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine.All these centers "will configure a very powerful ecosystem", around CaixaResearch as the "flagship",the president of the Fundació la Caixa highlighted at the inauguration.
"The CaixaResearch Institute will not go it alone," Tabernero stressed. So much so that the budget allocated to the institute will not be to the detriment of what the other centers supported by the foundation receive, but rather they start from an additional investment to articulate this ecosystem. In addition, it emerges forming a new scientific hub, in synergy with CosmoCaixa, which will become a showcase for the center's researchers and their work. The two buildings, united by the new Francesc Moragas gardens —in honor of the founder of La Caixa—, will give rise to the foundation's new scientific campus, also dialoguing with Collserola through its design, by the TAC Arquitectes studio.
The center's research work will also be amplified with a symposium that the institute plans to organize annually in January, with top-level researchers from around the world, including Nobel Prize winners. All of this, based on three sentiments, according to Fainé: "The excitement for what is beginning; the joy for what the people who will work at the CaixaResearch Institute will achieve, and the hope that all of this will serve to make possible a greater well-being for society and for people."
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