Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital (Cantabria)

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SMC participants

President of the Spanish Society of Immunology (SEI) and former secretary of the Spanish Society of Transplantation (SET)

Contents related to this centre
sarampión

Toledo and Alicante are suffering the first outbreaks of measles recorded in Spain since the pandemic, El País reported today. In total, 15 cases have been confirmed since 1 January, of which seven are imported and eight autochthonous.

Tobacco

A study has analysed more than 100 environmental factors and their impact on the immune response. After studying about a thousand volunteers, its conclusions are that smoking is the factor that causes the most alterations in defences. While some changes are transient, others may remain for years after quitting. The results are published in the journal Nature.

transplant

Currently, when an organ transplant is performed, the patient has to take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent his or her system from rejecting the new organ. These drugs must be taken for life and have numerous side effects. In a phase 1 clinical trial, researchers gave patients receiving a liver transplant regulatory dendritic cells derived from the original donor, with the hypothesis that these cells could 'teach' the recipient's immune system to tolerate the new organ. The research, published in Science Translational Medicine, suggests that this treatment could reduce or even eliminate the need for long-term use of immunosuppressants.

Hipra

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has licensed Hipra's vaccine - currently called Bimervax - against SARS-CoV-2 as a booster in people aged 16 years and older who have previously been vaccinated with mRNA vaccines. The EMA began the ongoing evaluation of the vaccine, which was expected to be approved in the middle of last year, on 29 March 2022.

vacunas

The director of the Vaccine Strategy of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Marco Cavaleri, told a press conference on 11 January that "it is not sustainable in the long term to continue giving booster doses every three or four months [to the general population]". Spanish immunologists agree that this is not the right thing to do. In these reactions they explain why.