The 2025 edition of the "la Caixa" Foundation's Health Research Call has selected 34 new cutting-edge biomedical research projects, each with up to one million euros in funding. This eighth edition of the call, which received 714 proposals for basic, clinical, and translational research, is specifically aimed at addressing health challenges in various fields: neuroscience, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, oncology, infectious diseases, and enabling technologies in any of these areas. Among this year's selected projects at Catalan institutions are those focused on improving beta cell maturation for diabetes treatment, creating a reliable system for testing drugs for spinal cord injuries without the need for animal testing, and targeting the tumor microenvironment to unlock the immune system.

There are currently more than 900 million people over the age of 65 in the world and in 2050 there could be 2,000 million, explains Francesc Posas, director of the Institute of Biomedical Research, a pioneering institution in launching a programme on ageing. Much has been said about the socio-economic challenge this poses, both in terms of pensions and care for these people, but perhaps it is good to stop seeing it just as a problem and consider it for what it is, one of the great milestones of humanity in the last two centuries. It is clear from the graph that accompanies the opening of the dossier that we dedicate today to research on longevity and ageing. In 1800, the life expectancy of the European population was 33.3 years. Granted, many children died and this brought the average down a lot, but the truth is that very few reached old age and most of them died before they had reached what we now consider to be the end of youth. Hygienic measures and the introduction of sewage pipes, sewerage as it is known today, brought about a revolution, and by 1900 life expectancy had risen to 42.7 years, almost ten more. And the average rose still further when penicillin was discovered around 1930, which together with the first vaccines managed to reduce infant mortality. In 1950, however, life expectancy in Europe was still 62 years, and since then it has risen to almost 80 years (78.6) in 2019.

The pandemic, beyond its drama in terms of mortality, disease and social and economic devastation, will have left us with some useful lessons for the future. Much has been said about how the impact of human activity on the environment has been proven with the significant drop in pollution. Also of the wonderful example of scientists from all over the world working at the same time to learn more about the virus and thus know how to act and how it can be fought with vaccines. Or the paramount importance of the entire health system and its spirit of sacrifice despite the lack of resources. Today we talk in our dossier of another effect that may be interesting for the future: the disease affects men and women differently, and this demonstration has shown that the same thing happens in other cases without the focus or the means to demonstrate it so clearly.