Dr. Molina, head of the pneumology research group and scientific director at IDIBELL and head of the Lung Interstitium Functional Unit at Bellvitge Hospital, has received one of the ERS Mid-Career Gold Medals Award, which recognizes both an already consolidated outstanding research career and the work potential still ahead of a respiratory diseases specialist.

The award was granted during the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress that is being held in Vienna between September 7 and 11.

Dr. Molina graduated in Medicine and Surgery (1998), conducted a PhD in Biomedicine and became an associate professor at the University of Barcelona (UB) in 2015. In 2008 he joined IDIBELL and Bellvitge University Hospital (HUB), where he started leading the Pneumology research laboratory. In addition, since February of the current year, she is the new IDIBELL scientific director. In 2023 she was appointed scientific director of CIBERES, the respiratory diseases area of CIBER, the state public consortium promoted by the Carlos III Health Institute and the Ministry of Science and Innovation to promote collaborative research throughout the State.

Her professional career has focused on the study and care of interstitial lung diseases (ILD), a heterogeneous group of rare pathologies that produce pulmonary fibrosis: progressive lung scarring that ends up being lethal. She has focused his research on understanding the development and regulation of pulmonary fibrosis, combining basic and clinical research with the aim of carrying out cross-sectional, translational research with rapidly applicable health results to improve the patients’ survival and quality of life.

Among the main milestones in Dr Molina’s biomedical research career are the identification of the clinical utility of telomere and genetic study in ILD, contributing to consensus documents for its use in clinical practice and the identification of the angiotensin system in the lung as a fibrogenic pathway, including the dysregulation of ACE-2. His research was of particular global interest during the COVID19 pandemic. She has been a promoter in four clinical trials and principal investigator in 21.

She is currently leading, among others, the PRECISION-ILD Precision Medicine project, which aims to improve the early diagnosis and personalized treatment of interstitial lung diseases by searching for useful biomarkers and applying AI and computational modeling-based data interpretation techniques. In addition, she is a reference in preclinical (in vitro) trials of new antifibrotic drugs. She has also supervised ten doctoral theses, eight of them defended in the last five years. To date, she has published more than 200 articles, more than 50 as the first or last author, accumulates nearly 10,000 citations and has an h-factor of 37.

Another identifying feature of their care work is the genuine interest and direct contact with their patients, people with specific histories and circumstances that is essential to know in order to offer them the best possible treatment.

The Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) is a biomedical research center created in 2004. It is participated by the Bellvitge University Hospital and the Viladecans Hospital of the Catalan Institute of Health, the Catalan Institute of Oncology, the University of Barcelona and the City Council of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

IDIBELL is a member of the Campus of International Excellence of the University of Barcelona HUBc and is part of the CERCA institution of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In 2009 it became one of the first five Spanish research centers accredited as a health research institute by the Carlos III Health Institute. In addition, it is part of the “HR Excellence in Research” program of the European Union and is a member of EATRIS and REGIC. Since 2018, IDIBELL has been an Accredited Center of the AECC Scientific Foundation (FCAECC).