Interview with Laura Donadeu Casassas: Advancing CMV Research Through Collaboration
During the recent WP4 research team meeting in Barcelona (4–5 June 2025), we spoke with Laura Donadeu Casassas, a PhD Fellow in the Nephrology and Renal Transplant group at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), about her role in the HORUS project and the importance of standardising immunological assays across Europe.
Q: What is your role in WP4?
Laura: Within WP4, I serve as a technical expert in the T-SPOT technique. I support our partners with training and help ensure we’re all working to a unified protocol. It’s very much a collaborative process, we share feedback, refine the method together, and work towards consistency across all centres involved.
Q: Which lab or institution are you affiliated with, and what expertise does your team contribute to the project?
Laura: I’m part of the Nephrology and Renal Transplant group at Vall d’Hebron Research Institute. Our team has substantial expertise in immunological assays, particularly T-SPOT, which we use in both clinical practice and research. We provide technical insight and standardised procedures to help guarantee reliable and consistent results across the consortium.
Q: What were you hoping to gain from your time in Barcelona?
Laura: I was eager to work more closely with the other teams to establish a firm consensus on the T-SPOT protocol, so that all sites can implement it in exactly the same way. This is vital to ensure our results are comparable. I was also keen to collaborate on a shared strategy for validating the ELISPOT readers and harmonising data analysis across the project.
Q: How will the techniques you’re developing support your work on HORUS and in general?
Laura: The techniques we’re refining, especially through collaboration, are crucial for the success of HORUS. By aligning protocols and validating key tools such as ELISPOT readers, we’re ensuring high-quality, comparable data across all partner sites. More broadly, this work strengthens our laboratory’s ability to carry out standardised immunological assays, which will benefit future research and clinical applications alike.
Q: Why is this project personally important to you, and what impact do you hope it will have for patients?
Laura: This project represents an exciting opportunity to collaborate with leading European teams in CMV research and transplantation. It’s also addressing a significant challenge: how best to predict and manage CMV infections in at-risk patients, such as transplant recipients. By developing standardised, reliable immune-monitoring techniques, we hope to enhance prevention strategies, enable more personalised treatments, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
Laura’s insights highlight the critical importance of collaboration, standardisation, and technical precision in advancing CMV research within the HORUS project. Her work not only strengthens the scientific foundations of WP4 but also reinforces the collective goal of improving patient care for transplant recipients across Europe. As the project progresses, the shared commitment to harmonised methods and validated tools will be key to ensuring robust, actionable outcomes that can shape the future of personalised medicine and infectious disease management.
