The Institute for AIDS Research, IrsiCaixa, is a benchmark institute the world over and a leader in research into eradicating HIV and related diseases. Its research also addresses other challenges in biomedicine today, such as the study of emerging infectious diseases, the microbiome and cancer.
Supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation and the Generalitat de Catalunya Ministry of Health, IrsiCaixa was founded in 1995 as a private non-profit foundation. Dr Bonaventura Clotet is its director, as well as president of the Fight Infections Foundation and clinical director for infectious diseases with the territorial management of the Northern Metropolitan Area of the Catalan Health Institute.
IrsiCaixa is attached to Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol and the Fight Infections Foundation, which involves a unique model of collaboration between research and care staff, patients and representatives of the community. This knowledge transfer between the different stakeholders helps provide new solutions and facilitates progress towards curing and eradicating HIV/AIDS, providing better treatment of emerging infectious diseases and contributing developments in the study of the microbiome and cancer.
The 12 research groups and over 100 people who make up the IrsiCaixa professional team carry out translational research, in coordination with research and healthcare centres the world over. The resulting publications have some of the highest impact factors in the field of infectious diseases.