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Iberdrola and the Spanish Cancer Association (AECC) have renewed their partnership until 2021, through a new collaboration agreement that will mainly focus on research for better diagnosis and cancer treatment. So explained Ángeles Santamaría, CEO of Iberdrola España, and Ignacio Muñoz Pidal, the president of the association, during a visit this morning to the company’s headquarters in Madrid.

Iberdrola's collaboration with the AECC dates back to 2015, since then, the energy company has allocated almost 3 million euros in resources for publicity and awareness-raising activities to continue informing the public regarding the need to broaden research in this field.

At the meeting, Ángeles Santamaría stressed “the importance of this collaboration to continue to help fight this disease, from those areas in which private initiative is most useful: raising awareness about prevention and healthy habits and providing resources to allow our researchers to make progress in furthering their knowledge of the disease and the treatments to tackle it. She also highlighted the involvement of the company’s employees and customers in initiatives that demonstrate the advantages of working together against cancer”.

For his part, Ignacio Muñoz, stressed that “Iberdrola is a magnificent example of awareness in the fight against cancer as it combines, on the one hand, social support, through the commitment of its customers and business support, as the company doubles the amount that its customers contribute”. “What’s more, -the president of the Association continued-, this renewal means the support of a great company and is the perfect example of long-term commitment”. The Association is the organisation that currently allocates the most funds to researching the disease, with 70 million euros in 380 research projects under development since 2013.

 

Customers, employees and the company, together against cancer

One of the most innovative initiatives developed as part of this agreement is Together against Cancer, in which Iberdrola offers its customers the possibility of donating money to the Association, undertaking to double the amount that they donate monthly, through their electricity or gas bill. Since the launch of this campaign, in 2017, more than 86,000 of the company’s customers have been involved in the project, with Iberdrola and its customers contributing a total of 2.4 million euros to the AECC.

Likewise, the company sponsors the AECC races that take place in Madrid, Murcia and Valladolid, the latter is the largest in Spain and it raises the most money for research. The company also organises activities on World Cancer Day and World Cancer Research Day and conducts talks, workshops and information campaigns to raise awareness among its employees, impacting on the prevention and importance of acquiring healthy lifestyle habits to minimise the impact of this disease.

 

Research to improve understanding and increase survival

The agreement signed by both parties today establishes that, henceforth, all the resources donated by the energy company will be devoted entirely to research and, more specifically, to the Study on Transformation and Resistance Mechanisms in Haematological Cancers, led by Dr. Jesús San Miguel at the Foundation for Applied Medical Research, in Navarra, in which researchers from the United Kingdom and Italy participate.

The objective of this research, which will receive these resources over the next three years, with the possibility of a two-year extension, is to understand how the mechanism by which cells mutate into cancer cells works, allowing progress in early diagnosis and also to analyse the resistance mechanisms that these types of cancers have after treatment, ultimately leading to a relapse in patients with multiple myeloma, myeloblastic leukaemia and follicular lymphomas.

Thanks to the research, there is currently a five-year survival rate of 53%, although the goal is to reach 70% by 2030. To achieve this we need to promote cancer research as a country which can only be done with the effort and collaboration of society as a whole.