Page 21 - Memora anual Fundación CIEN 2017

1. PROFILE AND PRESENTATION

What do you remember and what would you highlight from the first years at the Alzheimer
Center? And today, what would you highlight?

As in the launching of any Center, the most relevant of those years, and what I remember best, was all the
work of designing the main work processes, the purchase of material and the first processes of selection for
hiring personnel. Soon we had a small working group that was able to carry out everything that corres-
ponded to our Department. We all came with the work habits of a hospital, and we had to adapt to a dif-
ferent research environment, and a very special one, because in the social-health dimension of the Center
it makes it totally different from any basic research Center. I think that what struck me the most was the pos-
sibility of developing the work of the brain bank without the limitations and natural conditioning, derived
from the healthcare activity, typical of a hospital.
The current moment of the Center is complex and very interesting. We are a small research Center but very
well connected with different research groups, especially CIBERNED. In addition, the activity of the tissue
bank keeps us in constant relationship with an extensive set of clinicians interested in the activity of brain
donation and in neuropathology. We already have enough experience regarding our ability and also our
limitations. I think that now, much more than a few years ago, we are in a position to decide what the best
lines of development of the Center may be.

What do you think makes a Center like this one become a benchmark in the fight against
Alzheimer's?

Certainly, the singularity of the Center is very important, linked to the Queen Sofia Foundation Alzheimer
Center and to the cohort of patients that we have been studying since 2007. Little by little, the increase of
data of all kinds on these patients will place us as a unique Center in the world for the study of the advan-
ced stages of the disease. The monitoring of other cohorts, such as the Vallecas project, has undoubtedly
contributed to the dissemination of the Center's activity.

How do you see the Alzheimer's Center in another 10 years?

It seems to me probable, and also desirable, that the Center grows, both in its infrastructures and in per-
sonnel, and that it incorporates new areas of work in relation for instance with cognitive neuroscience and
some lines of experimental work. It would also be desirable for the Center to be more integrated or coor-
dinated with Madrid's public and private healthcare network, and that it could incorporate patients from
the network into its study cohorts, both in longitudinal, descriptive studies and in clinical trials.

CIEN Foundation Annual Report 2017 / 21