Sarah Moreira, Author at Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

May 30, 2025

Disrupting malaria’s inner balance: targeting parasite’s protein control system could be key to innovative treatments

IBEC and ISGlobal researchers led a study that points towards protein aggregation as a possible target to find new ways to reduce the viability of Plasmodium falciparum, the main causing agent of malaria. By inducing protein aggregation, they observed considerable disorders in protein homeostasis and a significant reduction in parasite growth. The results position protein aggregation control as a promising target for antimalarial therapies.

May 28, 2025

IBEC receives funding from the prestigious Human Frontier Science Program

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is participating in the international SOLFEGE project, which aims to explore how different cell types coordinate with each other through soluble factors in the tumour microenvironment. This project has been made possible thanks to funding from the Human Frontier Science Program. SOLFEGE is a consortium led by the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), with IBEC and the Duke University, as partners.

May 28, 2025May 27, 2025

IBEC co-organised the leading international symposium on mutational scanning

Family foto of the 8th Mutational Scanning Symposium at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB).

More than 300 people attended the eighth Mutational Scanning Symposium, which took place from 21 to 23 May at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park. The symposium is a key event for discussing the latest advances in mutational scanning technologies and Multiplex Assays of Variant Effects. This year, the symposium was co-organised by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, the Centre for Genomic Regulation, and the international Atlas of Variant Effects initiative.

May 19, 2025

The reSEARCH4TALENT event opens the doors of IBEC to young talent

On Friday 16 May, the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia held the eleventh reSEARCH4TALENT event, which is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in pursuing a career in research. The event brought together over 50 people, who were able to learn about life at the institute, speak with researchers, and tour the laboratories.

May 16, 2025

IBEC receives the Manel Xifra i Boada Award as a technological centre

The awards ceremony was held yesterday at the Caixabanc Auditorium in Girona. IBEC was awarded in the technology centre category in recognition of its twenty years of excellence and interdisciplinary research at the intersection of engineering and life sciences.

May 14, 2025

Sugar-coated nanotherapy dramatically improves neuron survival in Neurodegenerative model

The new therapy, made of nanofibers and trehalose, a sugar that naturally occurs in plants, traps and neutralizes toxic proteins to stop disease progression. Now trapped, the toxic proteins can no longer enter neurons and instead harmlessly degrade. The study, published in the journal of the American Society, was led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and the Northwestern University.

May 8, 2025

Common lung bacteria team up to evade immune defences

A study led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) has uncovered how co-infection by Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Mycobacterium abscessus, two common lung pathogens, can suppress immune responses and worsen outcomes in patients with respiratory diseases. The findings, published today in the journal Virulence, provide new insight into why polymicrobial infections are particularly difficult to treat and open the door to new therapeutic strategies.

April 30, 2025

“Explainable” AI cracks secret language of sticky proteins

The new AI is able to predict when and why protein aggregation occurs, a mechanism linked to Alzheimer’s and 50 other diseases that affect 500 million people. The results show great potential for research into neurodegenerative diseases and for improving drug production, reducing costs and increasing efficiency. The study, published today in Science Avances, is the result of a collaboration between the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).

April 9, 2025

New advances in the fight against the most common form of lung cancer

From left to right, Fernando Martín and Joan Montero at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. / Credit: University of Barcelona

A study led by the University of Barcelona in collaboraiton with the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia reveals that the functional assay dynamic BH3 profiling (DBP) can predict whether specific treatments will be effective in non-small cell lung cancer patients. The technique helps determine which therapy will be most effective by testing it directly on living cells, improving personalised therapies.

April 8, 2025

IBEC researcher Irene Marco-Rius receives Anatole Abragam Prize for her contributions to the field of magnetic resonance

Dr Irene Marco-Rius, principal investigator at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), has been awarded the 2025 Anatole Abragam Prize for her pioneering work on the use of magnetic resonance to study cells grown on chips, allowing ex vivo metabolic assessment of disease mechanisms and therapy responses in controlled microenvironments. The award was presented at the Joint ENC-ISMAR Conference in California.