Medical research Hospital La Fe in Valencia | The donation of one million euros from a seamstress allows us to finance five medical investigations in La Fe

The La Fe Health Research Institute (IIS La Fe) will finance five projects, with 50,000 euros each, within the ‘María Jordá Sanz Aid’.

This is a call whose objective is to generate basic and translational scientific research projects in the fields of oncology and cardiology between groups of the IIS La Fe and to make the will of the Valencian seamstress María Jordá Sanz, expressed in her will, come true.

The selected projects address challenges such as the neurological complications of immunotherapy in systemic cancer, cardiotoxicity in cancer patients, soft tissue and bone sarcomas, the role of cytokines in metastasis and the search for biomarkers for heart diseases.

The call arises from the charitable inheritance of María Jordá Sanz, a seamstress by profession who developed her career in London for 50 years and who died in 2017. María Jordá left her assets to the research into cancer and cardiological diseases at the IIS La Fe. This is the first solidarity legacy that the IIS La Fe receives and, thanks to the amount of the inheritance, future calls will be made in successive years.

This call has allowed us to launch a pioneering citizen participation initiative with the aim of bringing society closer to the world of biomedical research through the evaluation of scientific projects.

This is the Citizen Commission of the IIS La Fe, made up of representatives of patient associations, business people, social groups, health managers and the non-university educational sector, which has evaluated the proposals that have been presented to the internal call for ‘Ayudas María Jordá Sanz’ for research in cardiology and oncology at IIS La Fe.

María Jordá Sanz was a seamstress by profession and developed her career in London for 50 years. She passed away in 2017 at age 73. Single and childless, she emigrated very young to London, where she began working in a haute couture atelier that she ended up directing. Her family has recalled that it was in London where she learned about the tradition of donations to causes related to research. Furthermore, the personal experience of the death of two of her friends, due to cardiological and oncological diseases, led her to make the decision to make a will in favor of biomedical research.

María Jordá signed when she died that all her assets, valued at around 1.5 million euros, were going to be used to finance research projects in Cardiology and Oncology at the La Fe Hospital in Valencia.

The woman died in October 2017, at the London airport while waiting for the plane to fly to Valencia, but six years had to pass until the bureaucratic processes of the inheritance could be resolved. As most of the assets were apartments, some have had to be sold to obtain liquid money with which to finance these projects.

Once more properties are sold, there will be capital to pay for aid in the following years, which will be used to finance new research. Specifically, there was a flat in the center of London, three in Valencia, an apartment in Benidorm and another two in Finestrat, plus cash and shares in a bank.

It is the first time that La Fe Hospital receives a complete inheritance, all the assets of a deceased person, donated for research. This is a more common practice in other countries, such as the United Kingdom, where María Jordá lived for more than 50 years and what motivated her to do so as well, but in which she considered the reference hospital in her city, since she was born. in Ruzafa in 1939.

Her participation in the sewing workshop allowed her to gain a significant wealth that she decided to invest both in London and in the Community, where she came every three months. María Jordá had already informed her family of her intention to bequeath her money to the investigation.

The projects that will be financed with the legacy in La Fe have a duration of two years each and the money donated will also serve to cover the costs of the necessary material and the publication of the articles when the research is completed. From La Fe they plan to explain both to María’s family and to a citizen committee what they will do with the donation money, which is the winning project candidate in each case and what they will do in those two years.