About the VHIR
Here at the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) we promote biomedical research, innovation and teaching. Over 1,800 people are seeking to understand diseases today so the treatment can be improved tomorrow.
Research
We are working to understand diseases, to find out how they operate and to create better treatments for patients. Get to know about our groups and their lines of research.
People
People are the centre of the Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR). This is why we are bound by the principles of freedom of research, gender equality and professional attitudes that HRS4R promotes.
Clinical trials
Our work is not just basic or translational; we are leaders in clinical research. Enter and find about the clinical trials we are conducting and why we are a world reference in this field.
Progress
Our aim is to make the research carried out at the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) a driving force for transformation. How? By identifying new channels and solutions for the promotion of people's health and well-being.
Core facilities
We offer specialist support for researchers, internal and external alike, ranging from specific services to preparing complete projects. All this, from a perspective of quality and speed of response.
News
We offer you a gateway for staying up to date on everything going on at the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), from the latest news to future solidarity activities and initiatives that we are organising.
The Systemic Diseases group performs translational research based on at least 300 patients with systemic lupus erytomatosus (SLE), antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), systemic sclerosis, vasculitis, dermatomyitis, Sjörgen syndrome or autoinflammatory syndromes in order to better understand their pathogenesis (both at the immunological and genetic regulation level), study their clinical and biological expression (through the detection of new markers that help characterize each of the autoimmune diseases), study morbimortality (through epidemiological studies) and analyse patients' response to medications. With these goals in mind, we seek to improve the diagnosis, clinical monitoring, and prognosis of our patients.
The late clinical manifestations that arise when bioimplants are applied seem to have an immunologic basis. We are studying both the histological characteristics and the lesional mechanisms of the most frequently used implants. We try to analyze the role that bacteria may have in the induction and/or maintenance of these reactions and the possible correlation between particular HLA haplotypes and the adverse effects.
IP: Jaume Alijotas Reig
A high variability in the prevalence of adverse effects with an immunologic basis seems to be related with any implant used in clinical practice. We have managed to find a particular association of HLA haplotypes that increase the risk for developing these effects up to 600 times. We are nowadays working on setting up a safe and reliable biochip or kit which predicts this risk easily in a routine test.
We are performing a follow up study of different serological markers in patients who have suffered some anaphylactic episodes. The main goal consists on detecting anaphylaxis patients at the intensive care unit and to determine different serological and plasma markers, mainly tryptase and carboxypeptidase levels by means of a sandwich ELISA.
IP: Moisés Labrador Horrillo
Our main goal in this project is to try to avoid the repeated renal biopsies needed for establishing both the diagnosis and the following up of patients who suffer with lupus nephritis. By using just urine from the patients, we want to find out whether there is one/some biomarker/s (MCP-1, TWEAK, NGAL, APRIL, RANTES,...) that allow us to establish particular diagnosis and prognosis criteria equally effective or even more accurate than those obtained with the renal biopsy.
IP: José Ordi Ros
A Vall d’Hebron team demonstrates, for the first time, the potential of optical genome mapping to detect genetic alterations associated with this rare disease that are not identified using conventional methods.
The study describes the first documented case worldwide of hereditary angioedema transmission through assisted reproduction.
15 researchers from the Rheumatology, Systemic Diseases and the Physiology and Pathophysiology of the Digestive Tract groups gave around 25 presentations.
