Every year, stroke affects more than one million people across Europe and is one of the leading causes of acquired disability in adults. It is a medical emergency with potentially serious consequences, where research and prevention play a key role in improving patient outcomes and quality of life. At the Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), we work to better understand the causes of stroke and to develop new diagnostic, treatment and rehabilitation strategies. From clinical and translational research, the Stroke Research and Neurovascular Diseases groups drive multiple projects aimed at reducing the impact of this condition and offering new hope to patients and their families.

UMBRELLA: a European alliance to transform stroke research and care

Among the main projects led by the Stroke Research Group is UMBRELLA, coordinated by Dr. Carlos Molina, group leader, in collaboration with Siemens Healthineers. This consortium, comprising more than 20 public and private partners, aims to create a paradigm shift in stroke research and treatment through the use of advanced digital technologies and artificial intelligence with great transformative potential.

Since its launch a year ago, the project has established the foundations for a pioneering collaboration among specialists from different fields, creating a dynamic environment for knowledge exchange and innovation. In addition, numerous dissemination activities and conferences have been held to raise awareness of the project and promote cooperation.

In the coming months, UMBRELLA will reach several key milestones marking a new stage in its development, advancing towards the digital transformation of stroke care. These include the creation of a secure digital infrastructure interconnecting seven European hospitals through federated learning technologies, ensuring data privacy; the development of safe, accessible data repositories with a user interface and learning platform to improve patient follow-up; and the installation of new technologies that will enhance daily clinical practice across participating centres. Efforts will also focus on unifying clinical protocols and harmonising data to ensure all hospitals operate under common standards, and initiating patient recruitment for a European clinical study.

Another key step will be signing the necessary legal agreements among consortium partners, particularly regarding data protection and responsibility for handling sensitive information, and defining an innovation and intellectual property strategy to ensure the project’s results have a real and lasting impact.

TRUSTroke: AI for stroke patient follow-up

The same team also leads TRUSTroke, a project which has reached the halfway point of its development with significant progress. The project aims to create a digital solution based on artificial intelligence (AI) for personalised monitoring of patients who have suffered an ischaemic stroke. An initial study has been completed using retrospective data from 11,000 patients across three European hospitals: Vall d’Hebron, KU Leuven (Leuven) and Policlinico Gemelli (Rome).

Data have been processed securely at each centre to ensure a common (harmonised) format, enabling effective and comparable AI algorithm training. Algorithm accuracy will improve with the inclusion of 1,000–1,500 additional patients who will complete clinical follow-up using the Nora application during the first year after stroke. Currently, more than 500 patients are already participating.

The next phase aims to advance towards a reliable predictive AI model capable of providing personalised forecasts of patient progress, improving recovery and anticipating the risk of rehospitalisation — always ensuring an ethical, trustworthy and privacy-respecting technology.

Translational research to develop new therapies

In the field of translational stroke research, the VHIR’s Neurovascular Diseases Group, led by Dr. Anna Rosell, focuses on developing new therapies through the study of injury and repair mechanisms, the identification of blood biomarkers of recovery, and the evaluation of nanomedicine-based treatments in experimental stroke models.

Recent advances by the team include:

• Development and testing of new neuroprotective and neurorepair therapies through endovascular routes as a direct means to act on the ischaemic brain.
• Identification and validation of blood, genetic, protein, miRNA and imaging biomarkers to enable faster diagnosis and improved prognosis of stroke and other neurological disorders.
• Progress in developing nanomedicine-based transport systems (nanocarriers) to deliver endothelial-derived products that promote neurovascular repair.
• Research on the effects of environmental pollutants, particularly diesel particles, on stroke risk, severity and neuronal damage through combined preclinical and clinical studies.
• Collaboration in developing and evaluating candidate therapies in multicentre or pharmaceutical industry-led studies.

This research has been made possible through funding from La Marató Foundation (End-Stroke) and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RICORS-ICTUS and Health Research Projects), as well as through collaborations with biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

More recently, the group has launched new research lines to determine the genetic basis of paediatric stroke associated with rare diseases, in collaboration with the VHIR Paediatric Neurology Group, as part of the PReDICT project funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III.