On February 6, 2007, Esther Koplowitz met with the Mayor of Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, to finalize the details to get one of the most ambitious research projects in Spain under way, the construction of the Esther Koplowitz Biomedical Research Center. As scheduled, construction will begin on the Esther Koplowitz Biomedical Research Center totaling over 9,500 square meters in area at the end of this month, so that the Center will be outfitted and in full operation in 2010.
This Research Center, providing space for 350-400 researchers, will be focusing on research on the origins, diagnosis and treatment of diseases and will be promoting teaching in medical research, devoted particularly to researchers from other areas of Spain, Latin America and Africa.
The Esther Koplowitz Biomedical Research Center will be the new building where the researchers from the Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS) will be able to develop their full scientific potential. An institution created in 1996 by the Spanish National Research Council and the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona. This ambitious project will be possible thanks to the generosity of the Esther Koplowitz Foundation. This building being erected signifies the largest-scale patronage of scientific research in Spain and one of the most significant in Europe.
This new Center will be specializing in the study of:
- Liver and Digestive Apparatus diseases
- Metabolic Diseases, Nutrition and Obesity
- Oncology
- Neurological Diseases
- Poverty-related diseases
- Development of diagnostic and therapeutic technologies
The Research Center's activity will revolve particularly around what is known an "Transference Research", which is the research that relates Pure Research (conducted at Basic Research centers and institutes) to the Clinical Research conducted at hospitals.
The Esther Koplowitz Foundation
Supporting biomedical research and combating diseases is one of the Esther Koplowitz Foundation's most outstanding lines of action.
This Foundation's involvement in this area by way of nonrefundable aid includes the construction of the Center for Applied Medical Research at the University of Navarre or the donation of the Da Vinci robot to the Hospital Clínico San Carlos in support of its robot surgery program.
The Esther Koplowitz Foundation is one of the most important private charitable organizations in Spain and in Europe. Financed exclusively by the contributions of its president and founder, this Foundation has contributed funding to different programs for patient assistance, the prevention of diseases such as leprosy or research in the fight against Alzheimer's disease.
Since it was first organized in 1995, the Esther Koplowitz Foundation has devoted 82 million euros to aid for helping society's most unfortunate: the ill, young children, the socially excluded, the elderly without resources ... By means, particularly, of building and equipping living facilities for the elderly and the profoundly physically and mentally handicapped which are donated to the different government agencies. This is the case of the home for the elderly without resources building in Collado Villalba (Madrid) and Barcelona or the home for profoundly physically and mentally handicapped adults donated to the city of Valencia.
The Foundation has already undertaken a commitment to build another similar home in Valencia, another for the elderly in Valladolid and to enlarge the home for cerebral palsy patients that the "Fundación Nido" has in Madrid.
