Hospital del Mar Research Institute Barcelona (IMIM)

Partner Information

  • Partner Full Name: Hospital del Mar Research Institute Barcelona (IMIM)
  • Partner Short Name: IMIM
  • Country: Spain
  • Website: www.parcdesalutmar.cat

The Hospital del Mar is a university tertiary hospital in Barcelona, covering an area of 300K inhabitants. It was inaugurated during the typhus epidemic of 1914 and has become one of the most important hospitals in Barcelona. The Hospital del Mar Research Institute is a biomedical research centre, part of Hospital del Mar, which has one of the most relevant scientific outputs in the country, with projects that bring science closer to daily applications in the health of the people it serves.  Two groups will be involved in TARGET: the Rehabilitation Department and the Neurovascular Research Group.  

The Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department of Hospital del Mar is the leading rehabilitation centre in the city of Barcelona. It encompasses a therapeutic area of 1000 m2 where more than 350 new patients with neurological, traumatic, and postsurgical sequelae are treated annually. The facility is equipped with the necessary infrastructure to conduct functional assessments required for instrumental diagnosis, as well as the application of specific therapies. This entire infrastructure has received positive evaluations from local, national, and international organizations, which have provided funding over the past 15 years. Aligned with the Translational Medicine Research Group_IMIM in 2013, the Rehabilitation research group officially gained recognition as an emerging rehabilitation research group in 2017. This dedicated effort has resulted in the publication of 75 scientific articles in esteemed rehabilitation journals, solidifying our position as leaders in the field.  

The Neurovascular Research Group (NEUVAS) is part of the Neurology Service at Hospital del Mar, affiliated with the Hospital del Mar Research Institute. We are a multidisciplinary team, formed mainly by neurologists.  One of our greatest strengths is the BASICMAR registry; a prospective clinical registry, associated with a sero/genomic library and a neuroimaging repository in subjects diagnosed with cerebrovascular disease treated at our hospital since 2005 (currently including over 10000 cases). BASICMAR has enabled the development of multiple national/international collaborative studies in the field of clinical and genetic stroke research. As a result of all this effort in the study of cerebrovascular disease, there are more than 100 scientific publications in high-impact bibliographic journals, and the awarding of numerous competitive projects. 

Key persons

Dr Esther Duarte

Dr Esther Duarte, MD, PhD, specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation is the Head of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department of the Hospital del Mar and professor of Neurorehabilitation at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona. She is the coordinator of the RERG (Rehabilitation Research Group) of the Institut Hospital del Mar d' Investigacions Mèdiques of Barcelona (IMIM). She is a consultant for the Stroke Program in Catalonia and coordinator of consensus documents and clinical practice guidelines for stroke rehabilitation. She is currently a member of the Board of the Stroke Foundation and a member of the Advisory Board of the Stroke Program of the Department of Health of the Generalitat of Catalonia. Her work focuses on investigating the mechanisms of brain plasticity and motor recovery after brain injury, as well as evaluating the effect of advanced therapies such as Virtual reality and robotics on stroke functional outcomes.

Dr Anna Guillen-Sola

Dr Anna Guillen-Sola, MD, PhD, specializes in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) since 2005, head of the Neurorehabilitation Unit in the Rehabilitation Department, with a primary focus on translational research in stroke rehabilitation, specifically within the dysphagia field. With over 15 years of expertise in neurogenic dysphagia, her research primarily addresses dysphagia in the stroke population, emphasizing effective diagnostics and pioneering new techniques to treat swallow disturbances. In addition to her work in dysphagia, Dr. Guillen-Sola actively engages in the neuromuscular field, particularly focusing on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). A noteworthy collaboration involves identifying clinical biomarkers of bulbar dysfunction in ALS patients. She has published multiple peer-reviewed publications for each project.

Dr Eva Giralt-Steinhauer

Dr. Giralt-Steinhauer has been a specialist in Neurology since 2010. Her main focus has been on epidemiological and clinical research in cerebrovascular diseases. Within this line of work, she has particularly focused on the study of atrial fibrillation and cardioembolic ischemic strokes, which led to her obtaining a PhD in Medicine from the UAB in 2015. She completed a Master's degree in Statistics and Health Sciences at the UAB in 2015. Under the Juan Rodes Fellowship, she has completed training in echocardiography in the Cardiac Imaging Unit of Hospital del Mar. She has published a total of 85 scientific articles, and her participation in competitive research projects is noteworthy.

Dr Joan Jiménez Balado

Dr. Joan Jiménez-Balado earned his PhD in Neuroscience in 2020, when he used a novel approach combining neuroimaging and omics techniques to understand subclinical cerebrovascular disease. Subsequently, he embarked on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Southern California, where he gained more expertise in advanced neuroimaging techniques. Upon returning to Barcelona, he integrated into the Neurovascular team at the Hospital del Mar, where he expanded his skill set to encompass genomics and epigenomics analysis, which provided him with a new perspective to investigate cerebrovascular disease, catalyzing the initiation of new projects. Dr. Jiménez-Balado's career has been distinguished by competitive grants, including prestigious awards such as the AGAUR PhD grant and the Juan de la Cierva & Sara Borrell postdoctoral grants. His scholarly contributions are notable, with 31 articles published to date, with 89.5% of which featured in Q1 journals. As a first author, he maintains an average FWCI index of 1.3. He has been involved in 8 competitive projects over the past five years and serves as the co-Principal Investigator for two of them.

Dr Jordi Jiménez Conde

Dr. Jordi Jiménez-Conde is a Neurologist and Head of the Neurovascular Research Lab (NEUVAS) at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute of Barcelona. He combines clinical practice with research in stroke and genetics. He holds a degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Barcelona (Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, 1993-1999) and specialized in Neurology at Hospital del Mar (2001-2005). He received training in clinical epidemiology and genetics at IMIM and the Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. In 2008-2009, he conducted his postdoctoral research on genetic analyses of complex diseases and neuroimaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University in Boston. Since 2008, he has been a member of the International Stroke Genetics Consortium (ISGC), participating in collaborative projects and taking on a leadership role in stroke prognosis, epigenetics and biological age. Particularly noteworthy is his leadership in the "GODS Project", an international initiative that identified the first gene (PATJ) associated with ischemic stroke outcome, marking a significant milestone in stroke research. He is also the Co-Chair and founder of the Spanish Consortium of Stroke Genetics (Genestroke). In 2019-2020, he served as a visiting scientist and trained in translational medicine at the McCance Center for Brain Health (MGH/Harvard, Boston). During this period, he also trained in machine learning at MIT and collaborated on several ML-neuroimaging studies.

Maia Campanale

Maia is a Biomedical Engineer who is currently completing a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary and Innovative Engineering, with a specialization in healthcare applications at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). She began working in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at UPC, specializing in the analysis and automatic classification of peripheral blood cell images, for which she was awarded an undergraduate research fellowship. In March 2024, thanks to the TARGET project, Maia joined the Neurovascular Group at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute Barcelona, to collaborate on enhancing their ML-based neuroimaging studies to create virtual twins for healthcare.