Dr. Josep Vergés and the OAFI Foundation

• Article by Antonio G. García, physician and emeritus professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and president of the Fundación Teófilo Hernando
• Article published in ISanidad March 19, 2025

Bioibérica is a pharmaceutical company whose industrial plant is located in Palafolls, Barcelona. Dr. Josep Vergés Milano invited me to visit the factory and to give a research seminar on neurodegeneration and pharmacological neuroprotection. It was the late twentieth century and Josep headed the Research and Development Department of Bioibérica, a leading company in the production of heparin and also in natural health ingredients. Two of these active ingredients are chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine, positioned for the treatment of osteoarthritis due to their chondroprotective activity.

I met Josep during one of his visits to the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, at the Faculty of Medicine of the Autonomous University of Madrid, in the framework of the collaboration he was developing with the director, Professor Pedro Sánchez García. Josep was interested in one of my lines of research, pharmacological neuroprotection in stroke and neurodegenerative diseases, and wanted to learn more about it. That is why he invited me to visit the Bioibérica in Palafolls.

I did not see how joint chondroprotection and brain neuroprotection could intersect. But Josep, whose drive to open new avenues of collaboration with university scientists was unbridled, argued that the pathophysiology of both types of diseases, joint and brain, had common pathogenic mechanisms, among others, inflammation, oxidative stress and cell death by apoptosis. Seen with this breadth of vision, the comparison between the two systems seemed curious to me, so I took a plane and went to Barcelona.

After the seminar I gave in Palafolls, there was a fluid discussion between the Bioibérica researchers, Josep and myself, from which several ideas emerged to develop together with some drugs that Bioibérica then put on the market to protect the joints of arthritic patients and athletes, mainly chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine, mentioned above.

Collaborations in science sometimes arise by chance, as in the case of my incursion into osteoarthritis, inflammation and pain, thanks to my meeting with Dr. Josep Vergés.

We began our collaboration with specific projects related to neurotoxicity, mechanisms of neuronal death and neuroprotection exerted by Bioibérica drugs. Professor Manuela García López and some young doctoral and postdoctoral students were involved in these studies, which resulted in some joint publications with authors from both groups.

But a chance discovery helped to strengthen this collaboration, with the creation of a Sponsorship Chair that I directed for a decade at the Autonomous University of Madrid. Its activities were logically related to chronic inflammation and, during that decade, the generous funding of that interesting research was provided by Bioibérica, thanks to the support of Dr. Vergés.

Bioibérica also had medicinal preparations based on hyaluronic acid, whose joint infiltration temporarily improved the clinical picture of pain and functional loss in patients with gonarthrosis. The chemists in Palafolls’ laboratory were able to break the large molecule of hyaluronic acid, with a molecular weight of several kilodaltons, into small disaccharide fragments whose pharmacokinetics were compatible with their intestinal absorption after oral administration.

We studied several fragments in neuronal cultures and demonstrated that BIS014 exhibited remarkable neuroprotective effects. This led to the filing of a patent and the joint publication of articles in international journals.

The Bioiberica-Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Sponsorship Chair operated for a decade thanks to the support of Dr. Vergés.

At that time, postdoc Dr. Javier Egea, who was working on a model of acute inflammation in the rat in Manuela’s laboratory, studied the compound BIS014 which, surprisingly, proved to be effective in suppressing inflammation and nociceptive pain. We all received the news with enthusiasm. In those years of the second decade of this century, Dr. Fernando Padín, who had received his doctorate at the University of Santiago de Compostela, was doing his postdoctoral work in my laboratory. Fernando was well acquainted with some in vivo techniques to explore the anti-inflammatory and analgesic activity of drugs and confirmed that the compound BIS014 exhibited these two properties after oral administration.

I thought that a new analgesic to treat nociceptive pain and inflammation was of little interest, given the large group of available drugs. But what if BIS014 had efficacy against herpes neuropathic pain, diabetic neuropathy, chemotherapy neuropathy, phantom limb, post-surgical pain, trigeminal neuralgia, stroke pain, or bone metastases? The available medication had limited effects in a small number of patients, as in the case of gabapentin, which also has sedative effects that limit patients’ activities.

Fernando Padín and I knew an excellent research group at the University of Granada studying pain in general and allodynia of neuropathic pain in particular. Professor Enrique Cobos, who had been trained in this field at Harvard University in the United States, opened the doors of collaboration for us. Fernando’s long stays in Enrique’s laboratory in Granada bore fruit, as we were able to discover that, in no less than five murine models of neuropathic pain, oral BIS014 was as effective, if not more so, than gabapentin. With the added advantage that the antiallodynic effect of the drug was not accompanied by sedation.

At one of the regular joint meetings within the framework of the Chair, Josep Vergés and his collaborators were pleasantly surprised when Fernando Padín presented the results of the antiallodynic effect of BIS014 in neuropathic pain models. This encouraged the extension of the Chair for several years, in order to study the mechanism of action of the new compound and to manufacture new batches of the molecule for the required preclinical toxicological and pharmacokinetic studies, before entering the clinical trial phases.

With these ideas in mind, and in collaboration with Bioibérica’s experts, we drafted a patent to protect the idea in the United States, Europe and Japan. Once approved, we made a joint international publication in a prestigious pain journal.

Within the framework of the Chair, we found a small molecule that has been shown to be effective, orally, in treating neuropathic pain.

The multidisciplinary approach to elucidate the profile of the compound BIS014 is an example of the richness generated by the collaboration, which involved researchers from Bioibérica, the University of Granada and the Autonomous University of Madrid, with some additional occasional collaborations with researchers from the Miguel Hernández University and the University of Santiago de Compostela.

On the other hand, the sponsorship chairs supported by companies favor the training of research personnel and a greater translational approach to research carried out in academic environments. I do not know what would be the fate of the curious molecule BIS014 that we left ready to undertake its preclinical and clinical development.

We lost track of it because Dr. Josep Vergés was working on an ambitious and stimulating project, the creation of a foundation for the study of articulation. Josep’s experience in osteoarthritis studies was extensive, both from a scientific and care point of view. He was regularly present at national and international congresses, both as a speaker and as an organizer of symposia.

He was constantly involved in new and novel activities, in pharmacoepidemiological studies, in the design and organization of clinical trials, in studies on various aspects of the pathogenesis of osteoarticular diseases, particularly osteoarthritis, sports joint pathologies and osteoporosis.

All these diseases were treated monographically in one of the week-long courses, within the framework of the International School of Pharmacology “Teófilo Hernando”, which we hold every summer at the Menéndez Pelayo International University, in the beautiful surroundings of the Palacio de la Magdalena in Santander. The School was organized jointly by Josep and Bioibérica, the Autonomous University of Madrid and the Teófilo Hernando Foundation.

It was a resounding success given the quality of the speakers, from inside and outside Spain, that we invited. Moreover, undergraduate and graduate students participated enthusiastically in the lengthy discussions that followed each presentation.

Dr. Josep Vergés left the pharmaceutical industry to give life to his life’s dream, the OAFI Foundation, in 2016

All this baggage had however the limitations of the patients’ access to this information, although Josep was already periodically organizing some courses and congresses with the patients’ associations. Josep confessed to me his interest in creating some kind of organization that would allow him to expand all this accumulation of activities and that could create new ones.

And so, in 2016, he saw the light of day the Fundación OAFI (OsteoArthritis Foundation International). Josep left the comfort of his activities in the pharmaceutical company and embarked on the more complicated path that would lead him to bring his dream to life: to work for and with patients, to increase knowledge of osteoarthritis and to seek the best preventive and therapeutic measures. These founding aims would later be extended to the concept of joint health in athletes and osteoporosis.

In Spain alone there are 7 million patients with symptomatic osteoarthritis, rising to 14 million patients in the asymptomatic group. Despite these astronomical figures, Dr. Vergés has always regretted that the health authorities and society in general consider osteoarthritis to be an unglamorous disease associated with old age: we are the geriatrics of Europe, he says.

But despite this, he has always advocated that osteoarthritis should be correctly diagnosed and properly treated with physical and pharmacological measures in order to improve the quality of life of patients, mitigating pain and improving joint function.

Over the years, OAFI has created a myriad of activities in the form of congresses, symposiums and courses, always focused on osteoarthritis patients.

OAFI is a foundation for patients. In fact, the symposiums, congresses and round tables it organizes annually are supported by patient associations. It also takes care of the relationship and collaboration with scientific societies of primary care, rheumatology and osteoarthritis in Spain and abroad. A curious activity is the consultation that OAFI offers free of charge to patients with joint problems, a consultation that is carried out personally by Dr. Vergés.

Josep practiced medicine and later devoted himself to research with stays of some years in Canada. With his vast clinical and scientific experience in the osteoarticular system, he has set up his clinic in the OAFI Foundation itself, where he provides free assistance to patients who require it.

I remember that before the creation of OAFI, Josep and I talked about the risks inherent in a new project. But it was clear to him that he wanted to exchange the comfort of his comfortable position in the pharmaceutical industry for the risk of embarking on the adventure of a lifetime.

Now, after 8 years of travel and frenetic activities, Dr. Vergés continues to create new activities and to strengthen the only foundation in the world dedicated to osteoarthritis, sportsmen’s joint health and the health of postmenopausal osteoporotic women, in the field and in collaboration with patients’ associations.

All of these objectives are pursued with multiple activities throughout the year, such as the great OAFI Congress in Barcelona and the already famous congress with the suggestive name of “Articulando el Deporte”, which is held every year in Madrid. Or the OAFI Forums, publications, support for scientific work in the osteoarticular field, educational programs, ARTRO360, workshops or OAFI radio and TV.

OAFI also focuses its efforts on improving athlete’s joint health and osteoporosis.

I have been fortunate to have met the great person that is Dr. Josep Vergés. In every meeting with him, in Madrid, in Barcelona or in congresses, inside and outside Spain, new ideas and projects would emerge and he would tell me about them with enthusiasm. It was impossible for all of them to crystallize, but of the many that came out of his fluent and overwhelming words, some of them became reality. His face would light up when he told me about one of his new projects. But in our occasional and rich meetings, there was also time for affectionate communication between two people who in difficulties had become friends, Josep and me.

At times, a person as unappeasable to discouragement as Dr. Vergés, lamented the difficulties he was experiencing in obtaining support for OAFI. But in our successive meetings he would resume his unstoppable brain activity to give life to new projects. Dr. Josep Vergés Milano, a true force of nature, deserves that the project of his life, the OAFI Foundation, finds a clear path for its consolidation. I hope so, my friend Josep.

• Article by Antonio G. García, physician and emeritus professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and president of the Fundación Teófilo Hernando
• Article published in ISanidad March 19, 2025