The Board of the EBMT would like to communicate the sad passing of Professor Alberto Grañena i Batista in his home-town of Barcelona on October 18th, 2013.
Albert Grañena i Batista was born in Barcelona in 1947 and graduated in Medicine and Surgery in 1969 in the same city. He achieved his PhD degree by the Medical Faculty, University of Barcelona in 1977, finished the internship in both internal medicine and Hematology and Hemotherapy and was nominated professor at the University of Barcelona after having developed several academic activities in the same university from 1972. In 1976, after a training period at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, he returned to Barcelona as Head of the Stem Cell Transplantation Group of Hospital Clinic I Provincial for almost 20 years. Many of the physicians who are currently leaders of transplant programs in Spain were trained under his supervision.
After leaving Hospital Clinic I Provincial he continued developing his clinical activity as Head of the Haematology Department of Hospital Duran I Reynals in Barcelona. His research activity was focused not only in the haematopoietic stem cell transplantation arena but also in the treatment of acute leukaemias and of immunocompromised patients. He became a member of the Josep Carreras Foundation in 1991 and went on in 1995 to participate in the creation of the Spanish Group of Haematopoetic Stem Cell Transplantation (GETH) and its first President-Elect from 1997–1999. He participated in the development of both the Spanish unrelated donor registry as well as in the cord blood bank in Barcelona.
Alberto had been very much involved with the EBMT over many years; he was President of the 10th EBMT Annual Meeting held in 1984 in Sierra Nevada, Granada and he participated extensively in the scientific discussions when EBMT was made-up of only a very small group of good friends. Alberto was not only an excellent scientist, but also a magnificent and generous human being. We will miss him very much and will always remember him as someone who lived life with a passion and who was dedicated to his family, patients and friends.