Research at the Medicine Campus

Research is one of the most important and most publicized activities at our Faculty. The UAM Faculty of Medicine is a point of reference in research, both nationally and internationally, as is demonstrated by numerous quality indicators: the number and amount of funded projects, publications, patents, grants, the number of doctoral theses presented, the qualifications of its teachers, etc. In 2009, for example, the Faculty housed 27 research projects with external funding of EUR 3,3349,645.11 and multiple clinical trials, and 100 doctoral theses were read. With regards to research funds corresponding to article 83 LOU (Organic Law of Universities), there were 71 project and their funding amounted to EUR 2,659,657.42. The research conducted at the Faculty of Medicine has contributed to the UAM being one of the few Spanish universities to figure in the list of the top 250 universities worldwide and amongst the top 100 Spanish universities for research.

The extensive research activity currently carried out the Centre is conducted in the departments and in their hospital centres and is structured around research groups made up of teachers from the 11 departments and internal and external collaborations with other groups. This activity is strengthened by the Institutes of Health Research: IDIPAZ (La Paz University Hospital Research Institute), ISS Princesa (Princesa Institute of Health Research), ISS FJD (Fundación Jiménez Díaz Institute of Health Research).

The following institutes also have a central role: the Sols-Morreale Institute of Biomedical Research the Combined CSIC-UAM Centre, the Clinical Trial Unit of the Department of Pharmacology y the Instituto Teófilo Hernando de I+D del Medicamento (Teófilo Hernando Drug Development Institute) integrated in the UAM Campus. All of the above provides the foundations for the new International UAM-CSIC Campus of Excellence and the UAM’s strategy for development between 2010-2015.

A key aspect of the new development of the UAM-CSIC campus and this Faculty in particular, is the link to new institutions of excellence in the field of Biomedicine. The gap between basic biomedical research (animal and in vitro) from its clinical application is growing every day and, despite increased knowledge on the mechanisms of biological processes, this does not translate into a corresponding increase in new treatments. The groups mentioned above add value and bring clinical and basic groups closer together with the aim of developing a more translational kind of Medicine.

In addition to the institutes mentioned above, also participating are biomedical research network centres Centros de Investigación Biomédica en Red (CIBER), el Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO) (National Oncology Research Centre)  y el Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) (National Centre for Cardiovascular Research) governed by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. Lastly, the constant collaboration with other public research bodies (OPIs), as well as the increasingly high number of research projects with companies, all contributes towards strengthening the Faculty of Medicine’s positioning as an important benchmark in all these fields.