Elías Campo Güerri
Medical Research 2016Boltaña (Huesca), 1955. Doctor of Medicine and Surgery from the University of Barcelona. He is currently Director of Research and Innovation at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and Head of the Haematopathology Unit at the same hospital.
The research carried out by Dr Campo and his team is closely linked to clinical practice, following a clear model of translational research or knowledge transfer that integrates basic and clinical science. The main focus of his research is the characterisation of human neoplasms, particularly those of haematological origin, from a multidisciplinary perspective to understand the mechanisms involved in their development and progression, define more precise diagnostic criteria, establish predictive models for disease progression and response to treatment, and lay the molecular foundations for the development of new therapeutic strategies. His research group was invited to join the international Leukaemia Lymphoma Molecular Profiling Project consortium, funded by the NCI, NIH, in 2000, with the ambitious aim of defining a new genetic and molecular taxonomy for all lymphoid neoplasms. In recent years, his appointment as Director of the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia Genome Project, alongside Dr Carlos López-Otín of the University of Oviedo, to participate in the International Cancer Genome Consortium has represented a significant step forward in his group’s research. This marked the first time that Spain has participated in a project of this magnitude within an international consortium. The consortium’s work has involved the sequencing of whole genomes for the first time in Spain; these were also the first genomes sequenced for this disease and among the first for any type of cancer. The impact of this work is having an extraordinary effect in various fields. These studies have revealed a genomic complexity of cancer on an unexpected scale, with the identification of new genes and metabolic pathways involved in its development and the discovery of new mutagenic mechanisms.
He has received prestigious awards over the last 10 years, such as the 2011 Severo Ochoa Prize for Biomedical Research, the 2012 Narcís Monturiol Medal from the Government of Catalonia, the 2013 National Research Award from the Government of Catalonia, and the 2015 Lilly Foundation Biomedical Research Award. He is the editor of two books, the author of 51 book chapters and 539 scientific articles in indexed journals, with a total of 32,738 citations and a Hirsch index of 90.
The jury for the Rei Jaume I Prize for Biomedical Research, meeting in Valencia, has unanimously decided to award the 2016 prize to Elías Campo Güerri, currently Director of Research and Innovation and Head of the Haematopathology Unit at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, and also Professor of Pathological Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Barcelona. Using molecular cytogenetics and microarrays, he has characterised the genomic profiles of various lymphoid neoplasms and leukaemias. The main focus of his research is the characterisation of human neoplasms, particularly those of haematological origin, from a multidisciplinary perspective, with a view to establishing the molecular basis for the development of new therapeutic strategies.
