The Hospital Clínic of Barcelona has created a Cancer Institute that will coordinate care for cancer patients and has the medium-term objectives of promoting research for the benefit of patients and turning the Clínic into a leading center in oncology. It will be directed by Aleix Prat, until now head of the hospital’s medical oncology service, and will have around 500 professionals including medical, nursing, research and management staff.

The reorganization will not mean any immediate changes for patients, who will continue to be cared for in the different units of the hospital. But “until now these units have not been coordinated with each other,” explains Prat. “The Cancer Institute will allow us all to act in a coordinated manner.”

The decisions to create the institute and to appoint Aleix Prat as director, which have been in the making since last spring, were approved yesterday by the hospital’s faculty board. With this decision, the Clínic anticipates the European Union guidelines on cancer care, which indicate that in 2030 90% of patients should be treated in Comprehensive Cancer Centers (CIC). The only Spanish hospital accredited as CIC at this time is Vall d’Hebron.

To be accredited as CIC, the Clínic must demonstrate that it has – among other requirements – excellence in diagnoses, excellence in treatments, research oriented to the needs of patients, collaboration with universities and a culture of continuous improvement. “This is a project for the entire hospital,” says the medical director, Antoni Castells, who highlights that the Clínic meets the conditions to be recognized as a top-level cancer hospital.

Cancer care currently represents around 30% of the hospital’s activity, with around 7,000 first visits annually and around 200 patients admitted each day. In research, the Clínic currently participates in 500 clinical trials of oncological therapies.

“We have a lot of activity in oncology but at this moment we are not seen as a hospital that is dedicated to cancer,” Castells confirms.

The Cancer Institute will integrate the current Institute of Hematological and Oncological Diseases, internationally recognized for its specialization in blood cancers. It will include the medical oncology service, specialized in solid tumors, as well as hematology, radiation oncology and hemotherapy and hemostasis services.

Aleix Prat’s project as director foresees that the almost 200 doctors at the Cancer Institute combine patient care, clinical research and university training. Another two hundred professionals will be nursing staff and a hundred will be research and management staff.

“The conditions that exist here, with the relationship with the University of Barcelona and the Idibaps research institute, are unique,” ??declares Aleix Prat. “My goal is to further integrate research and care so that innovation reaches patients.”

A genomic test developed by Prat himself to decide the best treatment for women with HER-2 positive breast cancer, who represent around 20% of all breast cancer cases, is an example of this patient-oriented innovation developed at the Clinic. This test, which the company Reveal Genomics has brought to the market, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2022.

Another example of innovation at the service of patients that emerged from the Clínic is the immunotherapies with CAR-T cells developed with the Ari project to treat blood cancers.

The plan of the Institute of Cancer and Blood Diseases, as it will be officially called, also plans to provide service to the entire population of the C-17 highway, which has the Clínic as a reference hospital and which includes municipalities such as Granollers, Vic or Ripoll. “We serve a population of 1.2 million inhabitants,” reports Prat. “The protocols have to be the same for everyone. It makes no sense that patients who live far away have to come to the hospital in Barcelona. We have to bring diagnoses and treatments to where the patients are.”