Sarah Moreira 
IBEC’s 17th Annual Symposium focused on ‘Bioengineering for Emergent and Advanced Therapies’, one of IBEC’s key application areas. Around 300 people attended the event, including local and international researchers. It was a multidisciplinary environment in which experts from other centres and the IBEC community itself had the opportunity to present their projects and share knowledge.
IBEC is one of the partners in the ambitious European project UNLOOC, a public-private collaboration involving 51 organisations from 10 countries with a budget of €68 million. The consortium aims to develop Organ-on-Chips technologies to reduce the use of animals in drug development and testing, and to improve the accuracy and personalisation of medical treatments.
Researchers from IBEC and ICFO demonstrate the ability of atomic sensors to non-destructively monitor, measure and optimize nuclear spin hyperpolarization of some clinically relevant molecules in real-time. These features, reported in PNAS, could enhance and reduce costs of quality controls used in clinical magnetic resonance imaging.
IBEC principal investigator Zaida Álvarez has received funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop stem cell-based models of the spinal cord. The project, coordinated by Northwestern University with the participation of IBEC and IDIBELL, will make it possible to study neurodegenerative diseases and develop new treatments for spinal cord injuries and other neurodegenerative pathologies.
The second IBEC-WCH Precision Medicine Conference took place last week in Chengdu, China. This is a partnership between the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the West China Hospital (WCH) of Sichuan University, which aims to strengthen scientific collaboration between the two countries.
A team of researchers led by IBEC and ICFO has developed and validated a novel photoelectrochemical electron spectroscopy technique to probe charge separation dynamics, a crucial step for photosynthesis, in photosynthetic complexes.
IBEC researcher Samuel Sánchez has received a Leonardo Grant from the BBVA Foundation. The funding will help him take his research a step further and use organic and biocompatible materials to develop his nanorobots, which will be used as drug carriers to treat bladder cancer.
A study led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has studied the migratory movement of groups of cells using light control. The results show that there is no leader cell that directs the collective movement, as previously thought, but that all cells participate in the process. These findings are relevant to the design of treatments to stop tumour invasion or accelerate wound healing, physiological processes closely linked to cell migration.
IBEC Principal Investigator Irene Marco Rius has been selected for the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant call to carry out her project ‘LIFETIME’. The project focuses on the study of individual cancer metabolism, which is crucial for less invasive early diagnosis and personalised treatments.
