Our MOBILIsE team members Ana Paula Pêgo and Bruno Sarmento have successfully secured highly competitive funding from Fundación ”la Caixa” through the 2025 ”la Caixa” Foundation Health Research call.
With a total award of nearly two million euros, their projects will advance two major research fronts: developing innovative therapies to prevent and repair brain damage, focusing on debilitating neurological diseases such as stroke, epilepsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – Ana Paula Pêgo; and creating an implantable device for administering drugs to treat Glioblastoma, the most lethal type of brain cancer in adults – Bruno Sarmento. (more about these projects on the i3S website).
The two projects are among just 34 selected in this prestigious call, which recognizes and supports outstanding biomedical research. We are proud of this achievement and excited for the impact their work will bring!
About the Funding: CaixaResearch supports excellent research in health and biomedicine carried out by researchers and physicians in Spain and Portugal, stimulating innovation and the transfer of knowledge in new treatments and solutions for patients, while disseminating the results to the entire society. The 2025 ”la Caixa” Foundation Health Research Competition had the collaboration of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), which allocated €1.8 million to fund three of the nine Portuguese projects awarded in this edition. According to the ’la Caixa” Foundation, this year’s Portuguese projects stand out for their innovative nature and high social impact. Since the programme began in 2018, the total amount of the ”la Caixa” Foundation’s Health Research competition has reached €172.3 million for 234 projects, of which 162 are led by Spanish teams and 72 by Portuguese research groups.
Ana Paula Pêgo (center) and Bruno Sarmento (right) together with Diogo Castro from i3S, also awarded in this call.