Sarah Moreira 
IBEC principal investigator Santiago Marco has been named IEEE Fellow, the highest honour awarded by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The award highlights Marco’s contributions to signal processing and machine learning in chemical sensors.
MWC 2025, the leading international event in technology and connectivity, took place in Barcelona this week. The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia was present, showcasing some of its spin-offs and participating in conferences and panels on digital health and technology transfer.
A study led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in South Korea describes the development of urea-powered nanomotors that improve immunotherapy for bladder cancer. The nanomotors activate the immune system more efficiently and exceed the efficacy of currently used treatments, opening up new possibilities in oncology.
IBEC spin-off Nanobots Therapeutics has been selected in the AECC’s 2024 call for IMPACTO grants. This is an initiative of the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) aimed at technology-based micro-enterprises and SMEs to accelerate the arrival of new treatments in the clinic. The grants were awarded in Barcelona today.
Today, the BIST Forum, an event that brings together the BIST scientific community, focused this year on the joint initiative of the seven CERCA centres to promote precision medicine in healthy ageing. During the event, the new BIST Ignite projects to promote multidisciplinary research were announced, with IBEC involved in four of the five selected projects. In addition, one of the projects in which IBEC is involved won a BIST Ignite Award.
Today, 19 February, IBEC organised the roundtable ‘Personalised medicine in action: from the lab to society’, an event that formed part of the Barcelona Health Innovation Week, promoted by Biocat. The session provided an insight into the keys to success in translating personalised medicine, connecting with actors in the innovation ecosystem and taking part in the conversation about the future of our health.
Investigadoras de entidades públicas y privadas impartieron el martes charlas simultáneas en 501 escuelas de 41 comarcas catalanas con el objetivo de despertar vocaciones científicas entre las alumnas de 11 a 13 años. Destacan instituciones como el Instituto de Biongeniería de Cataluña (IBEC), con 18 investigadoras.
The Micro Immune Response On chip (MIRO) allows tumours and their environment to be replicated in order to understand their response to treatment. The device, which has already been successfully tested on breast cancer samples, could be key to developing new treatments and determining the most appropriate therapy for each patient in a personalized way. The work, published in Nature Communications, is the result of a collaboration between the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and the Research Institute of the Hospital del Mar.
The President of the Catalan Government, Salvador Illa, and the Catalan Minister for Research and Universities, Núria Montserrat, inaugurated this unique infrastructure at the Barcelona Science Park today. The microscope, funded by IBEC and FEDER*, opens the door to the reconstruction of biomolecules and viruses in three dimensions, among other applications.
IBEC senior researcher Pere Roca-Cusachs has been awarded an ERC Proof of Concept Grant. This is a prestigious grant awarded by the European Research Council to explore the commercial and societal potential of research projects carried out at European institutions. Roca-Cusachs’ project, INTROPY, focuses on the inhibition of mechanotransduction as a potential therapy against cancer or fibrosis.