• The businesswoman's foundation will donate one of Europe's most advanced research facilities to the city.
• The centre, which will cost 15 million euro, will provide work space for the researchers from the IDIBAPS, the research institute created jointly by Barcelona's Hospital Clinic and Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research.

Esther Koplowitz, businesswoman and benefactress, met with Jordi Hereu, Mayor of Barcelona, to finalise plans to start construction of one of Spain's most ambitious research projects: the Esther Koplowitz Centre for Biomedical Research (CIBEK).

Construction of the 9,500-square-metre CIBEK will commence on schedule at the end of this month and the centre should be fully equipped and operational in 2010.
 
With work space for between 350 and 400 researchers, the centre will focus on research into the origin, diagnosis and treatment of diseases and will promote teaching in medical research, with particular emphasis on attracting researchers from other regions of Spain, Latin America and Africa.
 
The CIBEK will provide space in which the researchers from the Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS) can develop their full scientific potential. The IDIBAPS was founded in 1996 as a joint initiative of Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and Barcelona's Hospital Clinic. This ambitious project has been made possible by the generosity of the Esther Koplowitz Foundation. The construction of the centre is the largest single work of sponsorship of scientific research in Spain and one of the largest in Europe.

The new centre will specialise in studying:

• Diseases of the liver and digestive tract
• Metabolic diseases, nutrition and obesity
• Oncology
• Neurological diseases
• Poverty-related diseases
• Development of diagnostic and therapeutical techniques

 
The CIBEK will devote particular attention to applied research, i.e. combining fundamental research (conducted at basic research institutes and centres) with clinical research (conducted in hospitals).

Esther Koplowitz Foundation

Biomedical research and the fight against disease are among the main areas addressed by the Esther Koplowitz Foundation.

The Foundation has previously supported the construction of the University of Navarra's Applied Medical Research Centre (CIMA) and donated a Da Vinci surgical robot to Hospital Clínico San Carlos, in Madrid.

The Esther Koplowitz Foundation is one of the largest private charitable institutions in Spain and Europe. Financed exclusively with donations from its founder and president, the Foundation has funded a number of programmes to assist patients, prevent diseases such as leprosy, and research Alzheimer's disease.

Since its creation in 1995, the Esther Koplowitz Foundation has allocated 82 million euro to supporting the disadvantaged: sufferers from disease, children, people on the edge of society, and elderly people without means, among others. In particular, it has built and equipped residential institutions for the elderly and for people with mental and physical disabilities, and subsequently donated them to local administrations. Such projects include homes for elderly people without means in Collado Villalba (Madrid) and Barcelona, and a home for elderly people with severe physical and mental disabilities, which was donated to the city of Valencia.

The Foundation has also undertaken to build another similar home in Valencia as well as a home for the elderly in Valladolid, and it is funding an extension of Fundación Nido's home for cerebral palsy patients in Madrid.