Highlights of 2014: a Year of Changes

2014 was an important year for ISGlobal.  Pedro Alonso, founder and director of ISGlobal, was named in July by the World Health Organisation as new director of the Global Malaria Programme in recognition of his international leadership and expertise in the field. In September, we welcomed our new director, Antoni Plasència, who was Technical Director of the Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB), the ISGlobal research centre.   

After the summer, our centre underwent an internal restructuration in order to enhance the translation of science to society, and the think tank and technical cooperation departments were merged into the new policy and development department.  These changes coincided with the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Tropical Medicine and International Health Department of the Hospital Clínic, which is the origin of ISGlobal. At the same time, the Integrated Unit for Imported Tropical Diseases at Hospital Clínic–Hospital Sant Joan de Déu was designated as a national referral unit by the Interregional Council of the Spanish National Health System.

Research

Despite the difficult economical situation of the last years, we have consolidated our position as a centre of scientific excellence. In 2014, ISGlobal researchers published a total of 168 scientific articles, 65% of them in the upper quartile. We strengthened our scientific activity in areas like malaria, viral and bacterial infections, HIV/AIDS and maternal and child health, and we increased our participation in other fields such as population mobility and health (including recent threats like ebola, dengue and chikungunya), tuberculosis and leishmaniasis. Two new projects, coordinated by ISGlobal, were launched: 

• La Caixa against Malaria a strategic alliance between "la Caixa" Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to eliminate malaria in southern Mozambique by 2020.   
• EuroLeishNet, an Innovative Training Network (ITN) of the Marie Slodowska-Curie, Horizon2020 program, for the multi- and inter-disciplinary training of young researchers in leishmaniasis.

Concerning bench to bedside translation, ISGlobal launched its first spin-off, INNOVEX Therapeutics, focused on the research and development of extracellular vesicles for malaria vaccination and/or diagnosis. In addition, ISGlobal researchers filed a patent application for the use of peptides directed against outer membrane protein A (OmpA) for the treatment of Gram-negative bacterial infections.   

The alliance between CREAL, CRESIB and ISGlobal was strengthened by the support received from the Catalan government via the SUMA program of integration of CERCA centres. Last, we would like to underline the key role of ISGlobal in the creation of the Scientific Committee for advice on Ebola, at the height of the crisis.  

Education

The training offered by ISGlobal in 2014 increased with 6 new short courses in addition to those already proposed for example on Imported Diseases and Arboviral Diseases. In addition, the third edition of the course Science of Eradication: Malaria, organizad in collaboration with the Harvard University and the  Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, took place in June in Basel, Switzerland. Some months earlier, in February, we organized the course on "Elimination of malaria in Mesoamerica and La Española".

Concerning postgraduate programs, we have seen in 2014 a growing number of international alumni in our Master and PhD programs. Last year, we saw the graduation of the second student class of the Master in Global Health and the opening of the second call for the Erasmus Mundus joint doctorate programme on Trans Global Health.

Policy and Development

The fusion of the Think Tank and the Technical Cooperation departments into one single Policy and Development department reinforced the transfer of knowledge to society. Along this line, the department organized a tribune session on "The Future of Cooperation: Post-Millenium Goals", with the participation of Chris Elias, president of Global Development of the Gates Foundation director of the Global Development Programme of the Gates Foundation, Javier Solana, vice president of ISGlobal, and Pedro Alonso. In addition, during 2014 the Policy department authored 5 publications and one of them, the report La Brecha on inequity and global health, was presented in the CIDOB to representatives of the Municipality of Barcelona among others.