The latest edition of La Marató de 3Cat raised 10 million euros, which will fund 36 research projects on respiratory diseases led by 60 research teams. In Catalonia, these conditions affect more than two million people and are the second leading cause of hospital admissions and the third leading cause of death. However, they remain largely unknown and underdiagnosed.
In the 2024 edition, 94 projects were submitted and evaluated by 93 international experts in the field, who assessed them based on their quality, methodology and relevance. The evaluation process was managed by the Agency for Quality and Assessment of Catalonia (AQuAS), part of the Catalan Ministry of Health. Of the 36 projects funded, 20 are individual projects, while 16 are coordinated by two or more research centres.
Notably, three of the selected projects are led by researchers from the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB).
List of projects awarded funding in the 2024 edition of La Marató linked to the Institut de Biomedicina de la universitat de Barcelona are:
“Translating candidate causal genes in human respiratory disease using Drosophila melanogaster”
- Sofía Jorge de Moura Míguez Araujo, from the IBUB and UB’s Faculty of Biology; Marios Georgiou, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom), and Ian Sayers, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Nottingham (United Kingdom)
- Funding: €399,999
“Towards a broadly applicable class of anti-influenza virus agents acting as dual binding site inhibitors of the viral hemagglutinin”
- Francisco Javier Luque Garriga, from IBUB and the UB’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences, Santiago Vázquez Cruz, from IBUB and the UB’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences and Lieve Naesens, from KU Leuven (Belgium)
- Funding: €299,875
“Inhibiting respiratory virus fusion with anti-amyloid compounds: From proof-of-concept to pandemic preparedness”
- Raimon Sabaté Lagunas, from IBUB and the UB’s Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences
- Funding: €200,000
