Mutua Madrileña Foundation funds a research project from Lleida to identify survival factors following severe traumatic injury

The Fundación Mutua Madrileña has today awarded its 23rd Medical Research Grants, worth a total of €2.3 million, to support 21 new research projects that will be carried out in hospitals across Spain. Among the selected projects is one from Lleida that will use state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI)-based predictive tools to better understand the factors that determine whether a patient survives after a severe traumatic injury.

The project is led by Lluís Servià, consultant intensivist at the Department of Intensive Care Medicine at Arnau de Vilanova University Hospital (HUAV), researcher in the Intensive Care Medicine Group at the Lleida Biomedical Research Institute (IRBLleida), and professor at the University of Lleida (UdL).

The research builds on RETRAUCI, Spain's Intensive Care Trauma Registry, which collects data on patients admitted to Intensive Care Units (ICUs) following severe traumatic injuries. Since 2015, the registry has included data from more than 22,000 critically injured patients admitted to ICUs in over 60 Spanish hospitals. RETRAUCI was developed by the Trauma and Neurocritical Care Working Group of the Spanish Society of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine and Coronary Units (SEMICYUC) with support from a previous biomedical research grant awarded by the Mutua Madrileña Foundation.

The project will also build upon RETRASCORE, a mortality prediction tool developed by the IRBLleida Intensive Care Medicine Group to estimate the risk of death during the first 24 hours after admission in patients with severe traumatic injuries. "In this new project, we will use AI-based predictive models to better understand which factors determine survival after traumatic injury and further improve the accuracy of this prediction tool," explains Servià.

Catalonia will receive a total of €300,000 through this year's funding programme. In addition to the Lleida project, two other research initiatives based in Catalonia have also been selected.

At the Research Institute of Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, researcher Alba Segarra, from the hospital's Department of Genetics, will evaluate a new long-read DNA sequencing technology capable of detecting genetic alterations that have so far been extremely difficult-or even impossible-to identify using conventional diagnostic techniques. The technology will be applied to children with neuromuscular disorders who remain without a genetic diagnosis despite undergoing standard clinical testing.

"Long-read sequencing has not yet become part of routine clinical practice. This study will help identify the patients who benefit most from this technology and facilitate its future incorporation into the diagnostic pathway for inherited diseases in Spain, improving diagnostic accuracy and shortening the diagnostic odyssey experienced by many families affected by rare diseases," says Segarra.

In the field of breast cancer, researchers Ana Vivancos, Director of the Cancer Genomics Laboratory at the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), and Cristina Saura, Head of the Breast Cancer Unit in the Department of Medical Oncology at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, will develop a diagnostic test capable of detecting breast cancer from a breast milk sample.

The project builds on a previous discovery by the research team demonstrating the presence of tumour DNA in the breast milk of women diagnosed with breast cancer during the breastfeeding period.