Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

IBEC-IFIBYNE joint seminar
2022-09-08 10:00 - 13:00 (Europe/Madrid) | Sala Baobab, C/Baldiri Reixac 10-12, Barcelona, 08028, Spain
10:00Institutional WelcomeJosep SamitierIBEC10:10Presentation by IFIBYNE directorAdali PecciIFIBYNE10:30Training-on-a-Chip: a multi-organ device to study the effect of muscle exercise on insulin secretion in vitroJavier RamónIBEC10:50Coffee Break11:20Genomic regulation in pancreatic beta cell development and regenerationSantiago RodríguezIFIBYNE11:40TBDRomén RodríguezIBEC12:00Closing

The seminar will be held at Tower I, 11th floor Baobab room, at 10:00am.

IBEC Seminar: Myriam M. Chaumeil
2022-09-09 10:00 - 12:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, IBEC, Baldiri i Reixac, Barcelona
Imaging metabolism in neurological disorders

Associate Professor in Residence, Departments of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science & Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, UCSFInvestigator, Quantitative Bioscience Institutes (QBI)Lab website : Chaumeil Lab, UCSF

Our lab works on developing and biologically validating magnetic resonance (MR)-based metabolic imaging approaches using animal models of neurological diseases (such as genetically-engineered or toxin-induced). In this talk, I will present how optimized acquisitions strategies, based mostly on the hyperpolarized DNP-MR technology, can be used for improved diagnosis and treatment monitoring of neurological diseases, including multiple sclerosis, chronic traumatic encephalopathy and Alzheimer’s disease. I will also show how we use metabolomics approaches to identify potential pathways modified in disease, and normalized with treatment, with an example focusing on interneuron transplantation as a treatment for epilepsy.

Dr. Chaumeil is an Associate Professor in Residence in the department of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Science and Radiology & Biomedical Imaging at UCSF, a faculty member of three graduate programs (UCSF/UC Berkeley BioEngineering; UCSF Biomedical Science and UCSF Rehabilitation Science), and an investigator in the Quantitative Biosciences Institute. Her research focuses on developing new neuroimaging methods to improve the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis or vascular dementia. She is a Junior Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and has been recently elected on the board of the ISMRM Hyperpolarized Study group. Dr. Chaumeil grew up in the south of France, and received her engineer degree and her PhD degree in Paris, before moving across the world to California to join UCSF.

Sala Baobab, Tower I, 11 Floor, IBEC

IBEC-IRB joint seminar
2022-09-14 15:00 - 17:00 | Aula Félix Sarratosa, PCB
Aberrant phase separation is a widespread killing mechanism of bioactive peptides in health and diseas

Steven Boeynaems, Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine and Investigator at the Texas Children’s Hospital

Cationic repeat peptides are increasingly implicated in the pathophysiology of age-related neurodegenerative disease. These peptides are highly toxic in all tested disease models, and seem to perturb an ever-expanding list of cellular pathways. This observation begs the question whether this target promiscuity is (1) relevant to disease and (2) how it is encoded in such simple sequences. A first clue came from the observation that these cationic repeat peptides have the tendency to drive protein condensation. Given their charge, these peptides are exquisitely sensitive to the presence of nucleic acids. By studying their target space as a function of RNA concentration using mass spec, we uncover a hidden hierarchy in their target preference that relates to subcellular differences in RNA abundance.

To test whether these insights from disease translate to biology, we used this framework to develop a machine learning algorithm that allowed us to predict protein behavior form sequence. Compellingly, we uncover that bioactive peptides such as antimicrobial peptides produced by our own cells, but also venom peptides derived from spiders, scorpions and rattle snakes, phenocopy the molecular behavior of these disease-related cationic peptides. In all, we find that such peptides exert toxicity by upsetting the electrostatic balance of a cell, hitting myriad pathways at once. We name this process polycation poisoning and find that it has independently evolved again and again across the entire tree of life as a killing strategy of bioactive peptides. Based on these findings we are now exploring toxin-antitoxin systems as innovative therapeutic strategies to protect neurons against cationic repeat peptide toxicity.

Hosts: Benedetta Bolognesi and Xavier Salvatella

Place: Felix Serratosa Hall, PCB

PhD Thesis Defence: Maximilian Loeck
2022-09-16 12:00 - 14:00 | Carrer de Casanova, 143, Campus Clínic, Barcelona, 08036
Comparative study of nanocarries targeted to different transport pathways into and across the endothelium for brain delivery of therapeutic enzymes

Author: Maximilian Loeck, Targeted therapeutics and nanodevices

This thesis defence will take place at “Aula 14 (Dolors Aleu i Riera), Campus Clínic” at 12:30h.
Address: Facultad de Medicina, Carrer de Casanova, 143, 08036 Barcelona

Mechanobiology of cancer summer school 2022
2022-09-27
The MECHANO·CONTROL consortium, led by several research institutions across Europe, is launching the second edition of the “Mechanobiology of Cancer” summer school, which will take place between September 27th – October 1st at the Eco Resort in La Cerdanya.

The summer school aims to provide training on mechanobiology, and specifically its application to cancer.This school will include lectures as well as practical workshops in different techniques and disciplines, ranging from modeling to biomechanics to cancer biology.
There will be scientific sessions in the morning, mixing 6 keynote speakers with short talks selected from abstract submissions by junior scientists attending the school and a poster session. In the afternoon, there will be 2-3-hour practical workshops, given by scientists from the MECHANO·CONTROL consortium. The course will also include leisure activities.
The 6 confirmed speakers who will attend the summer school are:

Dagmar Iber (ETH Zurich)
Hans Van Oosterwyck (KU Leuven)
Claudia Fischbach (Director of Cornell’s Physical Sciences Oncology)
Giorgio Scita (IFOM – The Firc Institute Of Molecular Oncology)
Madeleine J. Oudin (Tufts University)
Maria Celeste Aragona (University of Copenhagen)

Attendance to the Summer School is open to all students, post-docs, and professionals interested, although priority will be given to junior scientists (up to the post-doctoral stage).

Application deadline:9th May 2022
Acceptance and registration:17th June 2022

Mechanobiology of cancer summer school 2022
2022-09-27 17:00 - 2022-10-01 09:30 | La Cerdanya Eco-Resort
The MECHANO·CONTROL consortium, led by several research institutions across Europe, is launching the second edition of the “Mechanobiology of Cancer” summer school, which will take place between September 27th – October 1st at the Eco Resort in La Cerdanya.

The summer school aims to provide training on mechanobiology, and specifically its application to cancer.
This school will include lectures as well as practical workshops in different techniques and disciplines, ranging from modeling to biomechanics to cancer biology.
There will be scientific sessions in the morning, mixing 6 keynote speakers with short talks selected from abstract submissions by junior scientists attending the school and a poster session. In the afternoon, there will be 2-3-hour practical workshops, given by scientists from the MECHANO·CONTROL consortium. The course will also include leisure activities.
The 6 confirmed speakers who will attend the summer school are:

Dagmar Iber (ETH Zurich)
Hans Van Oosterwyck (KU Leuven)
Claudia Fischbach (Director of Cornell’s Physical Sciences Oncology)
Giorgio Scita (IFOM – The Firc Institute Of Molecular Oncology)
Madeleine J. Oudin (Tufts University)
Maria Celeste Aragona (University of Copenhagen)

Attendance to the Summer School is open to all students, post-docs, and professionals interested, although priority will be given to junior scientists (up to the post-doctoral stage).

Application deadline:
9th May 2022
Acceptance and registration:
17th June 2022

PhD Complementary Skills Session: M.ª Ángeles García Asensio.
2022-09-30 10:00 - 12:00 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Tips for a good scientific Communication
M.ª Ángeles García Asensio, Comunicació Audiovisual – Facultat d’Informació i Mitjans Audiovisuals (UB)
Giving presentations is an important part of sharing your work and achieving recognition in the scientific communities. This workshop covers essential skills to convey your ideas and to communicate powerfully and effectively. We will learn how to engage audiencies facing two major facets to a presentation: the content and how you present it. With our tips for good scientific communication, you will avoid the pitfalls that put audiences to sleep.

Mª Ángeles García Asensio holds a PhD in Linguistics (Spanish) from the University of Barcelona (Spain). She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish Philology at the University of Barcelona and in the School of Media Studies. Her work is focused on Spanish for Specific Purposes (Professional Discourse), aiming to propose strategies to improve the effectiveness of written and digital texts and to design professional writing techniques for multimodal discourses.
She also combines the university tasks with knowledge transfer through the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation and StartUB, the unit that coordinates, promotes and develops entrepreneurship among the community of the University of Barcelona, offering courses in persuasive oral communication techniques.
As a communication coach, she collaborates with companies and associations.

Sala Baobab, Tower I, 11 Floor, IBEC

IBEC Seminar: David Odde
2022-10-05 10:00 - 12:00
Differential migration mechanics and immune response of glioblastoma subtypes
David Odde, Dept. of Biomedical Eng., U. Minnesota
Glioblastoma remains a deadly cancer driven by invasion of tumor cells into the brain. Transcriptomic analyses have revealed distinct molecular subtypes, but mechanistic and targetable differences that explain clinical differences are not clear. Using a state-of-the-art immunocompetent mouse model for glioblastoma – where tumors are induced by injection of plasmids containing human glioblastoma subtype-defining genetic drivers in a wild-type background – we found that, as predicted by the motor-clutch model for cell migration (Klank et al., Cell Rep, 2017), mesenchymal glioma cells are more spread, generate larger traction forces, and migrate faster in brain tissue compared to proneural cells. Despite their fast migration and comparable proliferation rate in vitro, mice with mesenchymal tumors live longer than mice with proneural tumors, which was correlated with an immune response in the mesenchymal mice that included T cell-mediated killing of cancer cells, similar to human tumors. Thus, mesenchymal tumors have aggressive migration, but are relatively immunologically ‘hot’ which suppresses net proliferation, features which are captured by our Brownian Dynamics tumor simulator (Klank et al., Conv Sci Phys Oncol, 2018). These two features counteract each other and may explain the lack of a strong survival difference between subtypes clinically, while also opening up new opportunities for subtype-specific therapies.

David Odde is the Medtronic Professor of Engineering in Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Trained as a chemical engineer at the University of Minnesota and Rutgers University, Odde joined the newly created Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota in 1999 where he is a professor and Associate Director for Strategic Research Initiatives in the Institute for Engineering in Medicine. In his research, Odde’s group builds computer models of cellular and molecular self-assembly and force-generation-dissipation dynamics, and tests the models experimentally using digital microscopic imaging of living cells ex vivo and in engineered microenvironments. His group seeks to bring an engineering approach that uses physics-based modeling and analysis to understand, predict, and control disease outcomes (oddelab.umn.edu). Dr. Odde is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is the Director of the Physical Sciences in Oncology Center at the University of Minnesota (psoc.umn.edu), which is focused on modeling the mechanics of cancer cell migration in biologically relevant contexts.

PhD Thesis Defence: Enrico Almici
2022-10-10 10:00 | Sala de Graus Eduard Fontseré, Martí i Franquès, 1-11, Barcelona, 08028
Investigating pathological extracellular matrix architecture
Author: ENRICO ALMICI, Nanobioengineering
This thesis defence will take place at “Sala de Graus Eduard Fontseré. Facultat de Física” at 10:00h.

President: Dr. Sergio Cerutt
Secretària: Dra. Elena Martinez Fraiz
Vocal: Dr. Eugenio Martinelli

Suplents:
Dra. Noemi Reguart Aransay
Dra. Valeria Chiono

Directors:
Dr. JOAN MONTERO BORONAT
Dr. JOSEP SAMITIER MARTI
Dr. JORDI ALCARAZ CASADEMUNT

Tutor: Dr. JOSEP SAMITIER MARTI

IBEC Seminar: Conrado Aparicio
2022-10-14 10:00 - 12:00 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

IBEC Seminar: Conrado Aparicio
2022-10-14 10:00 - 12:00 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Peptides and bioinstructive polymers on surfaces for prevention of oral infections
Conrado Aparicio, Faculty of Odontology, UIC Barcelona and Associated Researcher – IBEC
Oral infections are the most prevalent infectious diseases worldwide. We have explored bioinspired modification of surfaces of restorative/regenerative materials and implants as well as dental tissues to address oral infections by harnessing the biomolecular toolbox –oligopeptides, proteins, recombinamers, … and thus, mitigating the worldwide threat of antimicrobial resistance.
One of our strategies aimed at exploiting secondary structure and self-assembly of anti-biofilm peptides and recombinamers to increase anti-biofilm potency vs relevant oral biofilms and to form highly hydrophobic interfaces to obtain dual-action surfaces to address infection in dental peri-tisular and peri-implant sites.
Alternatively, we have found inspiration in the natural junction at the tooth-oral mucosa interface. Teeth, long-lasting percutaneous organs, feature soft tissue attachment through adhesive structures, hemidesmosomes, in the junctional epithelium basement membrane adjacent to teeth. This soft tissue attachment prevents bacterial infection of the tooth despite the rich – and harsh – microbial composition of the oral cavity. Consequently, we have tapped basement membrane peptides known to engage specific integrins as well as synthesized new bioinstructive photocurable resins that stimulate formation of hemidesmosomes on synthetic and natural surfaces.
We recently have also combined those strategies with immunomodulatory regulation to reduce inflammation triggered by pathogenic biofilms causing oral infections.

Dr. Conrado Aparicio is Professor at the Department of Odontology of UIC Barcelona – Universitat International de Catalunya, Spain. He is associated researcher at IBEC-Institute for BioEngineering of Catalonia and elected fellow of the AIMBE-American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Dr. Aparicio is a materials scientist and engineer by training. After starting his academic career at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) he moved to the University of Minnesota (UMN) where he spent 12+ years in the Department of Restorative Sciences, and was the Deputy Director of the MDRCBB-Minnesota Dental Research Center for Biomaterials and Biomechanics. Last year Professor Aparicio returned to his hometown, Barcelona, as FBA-BIST-UIC fellow.
For two decades he has carried out multidisciplinary research on bioinspired biomaterials and interfaces for directing biological responses to repair/regenerate bone and oral mucosa as well as to prevent bacterial infections for dental applications. Using inspiration from nature’s molecules and structures, his team designs and develops bioactive surfaces using supramolecular assembly and enabling spatial-temporal control of bioactive responses.
He has published 130+ research papers and has lectured around the World on bioactivation of synthetic biomaterials for reparative and regenerative dentistry and medicine. He is co-inventor of multiple patents, one of them licensed and marketed by a dental implant company. He has been awarded multiple national and international research projects from US and EC agencies, foundations and corporations, in interdisciplinary collaborations between academic and corporate engineers, biologists, and clinicians.

15th IBEC Symposium: Bioengineering for Active Aging
2022-10-19 09:00 | Hotel Alimara, Carrer de Berruguete, 126, Barcelona, 08035
The 15th IBEC annual Symposium will be celebrated on cite at Hotel Alimara. We hope to meet you all there as this is a great opportunity to bring everyone from IBEC community together.

The 15th IBEC annual Symposium brings together high-profile international experts for an open forum for interdisciplinary discussions and networking. This year the symposium is dedicated to Bioengineering for Active Ageing, one of IBEC’s three major application areas.

Scientific community is invited to participate. Attendees from IBEC and abroad are welcome to present their research or projects in poster format. Moreover, some of these contributions will be selected by the scientific committee for an oral flash presentation.

Also, it is important that you submit your abstract and register at the same time.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES 2022:

Abstract submission: 31st July

Notification of acceptance: 19th September

Registration deadline: 10th October

We invite you to register and, if you wish, to submit an abstract athttps://events.ibecbarcelona.eu/ibec-symposium-2022/

PhD Complementary Skills Session: Astrid Viciano
2022-10-28 10:00 - 12:00 | IBEC, floor 11, tower i
Science Journalism
Astrid Viciano, IBEC
We are continuously exposed to all sorts of information on science and health, with a sharp increase during the past years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, the role of science writers in communicating science to the general public is becoming increasingly important. With scientific knowledge expanding at a tremendous pace, writers who are able to understand scientific studies and scientists’ claims and translate their work for the general public are in high demand.
How do science journalists choose the topics they write about? How to they select the experts to speak with? And what career paths can lead into science journalism? Looking at concrete examples from the German and European media landscape, the underlying rules of science journalism will be explained.

Dr. Astrid Viciano has been working as a science journalistfor German national media such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Spiegel, and GEO for more than 20 years.
She has been working in a variety of European cross-border teams, focusing on in-depth investigative science reporting. From 2012 until 2016, she worked as a freelance reporter from Paris, from 2009 and 2011 she worked from Los Angeles. She has published articles in German, English, Dutch and Spanish. Viciano has won several national and international journalism awards, grants, and fellowships.
Astrid Viciano is a medical doctor (doctorate: immunology and virology), and also holds a M.A. in Specialized Journalism (USC Annenberg ’11). Currently she is „journalist-in-residence“ at IBEC. She is Spanish and German.

IBEC Seminar: Felipe Galvez-Cancino (canceled)
2022-11-02 15:30 - 17:30 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

IBEC Seminar: Takashi Hiiragi
2022-11-09 16:00 - 18:00 | Sala Baobab, Tower I - 11th floor
Multicellular coordination in context
Takashi Hiiragi, Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands
A defining feature of living systems is the capacity to break symmetry and generate well-defined forms and patterns through self-organisation. Our group aims to understand the design principle of multicellular living systems using early mouse embryos as a model system. We developed an experimental framework that integrates biology, physics and mathematics, to understand how molecular, cellular and physical signals are dynamically coupled across the scales for self-organisation. I will discuss our ongoing work investigating the coordination of developmental programmes in space and time.

Takashi Hiiragi is group leader at the Hubrecht Institute. The Hiiragi group aims to understand what defines multi-cellular living systems. In particular, the group studies the design principle of tissue self-organization, using early mammalian embryos as a model system. To this end, they developed an experimental framework that integrates biology, physics and mathematics. Their recent studies led to a model in which feedback between cell fate, polarity, and cell and tissue mechanics underlies multi-cellular self-organization. The group adopts a wide variety of experimental strategies including embryology, genetics, advanced microscopy, biophysics, engineering and theoretical modelling, in order to address fundamental questions in cell and developmental biology.

IBEC Seminar: Astrid Viciano
2022-11-11 10:00 - 12:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, IBEC, Baldiri i Reixac, Barcelona
Is the price of pharmaceutical drugs justified?
Astrid Viciano, IBEC
10 euros, 1000 euros, or rather 1 million? Many new medicines that have recently reached the market are prohibitively expensive. But are these prices justified? Science reporter Astrid Viciano has investigated the high prices of innovative therapies. For these investigations, she received a number of European journalism stipends.
Viciano will explain how the pharmaceutical industry calculates prices for new drugs, and who currently determines the costs for new medications in different healthcare systems. Looking into different, concrete examples such as the drug Zolgensma for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, she will point out how drugs are currently developed and approved, and how medications for orphan diseases are developed. Moreover, looking into historic examples such as insulin, she will look into why access to potentially life-saving drugs is still not guaranteed in all regions of the world, an urgent problem the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted in the past two years.

Dr. Astrid Viciano has been working as a science journalist for German national media such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Spiegel, and GEO for more than 20 years.
She has worked in a variety of European cross-border teams, focusing on in-depth investigative science reporting. From 2012 to 2016, she worked as a freelance reporter from Paris, and from 2009 and 2011 in Los Angeles. She has published articles in German, English, Dutch and Spanish. Viciano has won several national and international journalism awards, grants, and fellowships.
Astrid Viciano is a medical doctor with a doctorate in immunology and virology and also has an M.A. in Specialized Journalism (USC Annenberg ’11). Currently she is „journalist-in-residence“ at IBEC. She holds the Spanish and German nationalities.

Phys2BioMed Symposium
2022-11-18 09:00 - 16:30 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
Phys2BioMed Symposium
Present and future of mechanics of cells and tissues in health and disease
The mechanical properties of biological samples may provide insights into many physiological and pathological processes. Examples are the mechanical properties of cancer cells or changes of mechanical properties during cell invasion. Defining standardized procedures for nanomechanical measurements and providing, in the longer-term, a data bank of mechanical fingerprints of diseases, can lead to the development of effective early-diagnostic tools.
Phys2BioMed is an ITN (Innovative Training Network) that has the purpose of providing scientific and technological outcomes on biomechanics and mechanical determinants of diseases. The key advantage is merging diverse competences at the European level, from different fields like nanoscience and nanotechnology, physics, biology, and medicine. Thanks to the participation of hospitals and companies, ESRs (Early Stage Researchers) are exposed also to the non-academic sector.
The scientific community is invited to participate in person or online in this symposium.
Check for the programme and register here.

L’estat de la Ciència a Catalunya
2022-11-21 18:30 - 19:30 | Ateneu Barcelonès, Canuda 6, Barcelona, 08002
La investigació científica i tecnològica ha estat una de les claus del progrés de la societat de forma exponencial en els darrers anys. Aquesta investigació, però, només es pot portar a terme quan es té un ecosistema ric que permet als investigadors començar la seva tasca i desenvolupar-se. Quina és la situació actual a Catalunya? Quin és el marc català i quina és la perspectiva de futur? En parlem en aquesta sessió.
A càrrec de Josep Samitier Martí, director de l’Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC) i president de l’Associació Catalana d’Entitats de Recerca (ACER)
Presenta l’acte: Aleix Ràmia, ponent de la Secció.

PhD Discussions: Maria Gallo and Nimesh Chahare
2022-11-25 10:00 - 12:00 | IBEC, floor 11, Tower I, Baldiri Reixac 4-8, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Generation Of Reporter Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines To Study Cardiac Development And Disease
Maria Gallo, Pluripotency for organ regeneration Group
The development and the use of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) represent an effective tool to recapitulate characteristics related to tissue differentiation, morphogenesis and conversely, human diseases. Through their inherent capacity to differentiate towards the three germ layers and their easy manipulation, it has been possible to generate three dimensional (3D) self-organized organ-like structures, the so-called organoids. In this context, the advent of CRISPR-Cas9 technology has now allow to incorporate permanent or transient changes in the genome of living organisms and cells. Our laboratory has developed a cellular platform, named iCRISPR2 (iC2), that allows to perform highly efficient genome editing in hPSCs through the insertion of an inducible Cas9 under the endogenous TET/ON promoter. This platform allowed us the generation of reporter, knock-out and knock-in hPSCs lines. By exploiting the generation of cardiac reporter cell lines it has been possible to define new approaches for the generation of self-assembled cardiac-like organoids. Cardioids have been characterized at conventional molecular biology techniques, confocal microscopy and functional analysis. Moreover, taking advantages of specific cell culture conditions emulating early stages of diabetic cardiomyopathy it has been possible to establish a platform for the interrogation of transcriptional and functional changes during diabetic disease.

Mechanics of epithelial layers subjected to controlled pressure
Nimesh Chahare, Integrative cell and tissue dynamics Group
Epithelial sheets form specialized 3D structures suited to their physiological roles, such as branched alveoli in the lungs, tubes in the kidney, and villi in the intestine. To generate and maintain these structures, epithelia must undergo complex 3D deformations across length and time scales. How epithelial shape arises from active stresses, viscoelasticity, and luminal pressure remains poorly understood. To address this question, we developed a microfluidic chip and a computational framework to engineer 3D epithelial tissues with controlled shape and pressure. In the setup, an epithelial monolayer is grown on a porous surface with circular low adhesion zones. On applying hydrostatic pressure, the monolayer delaminates into a spherical cap from the circular zone. This simple shape allows us to calculate epithelial tension using Laplace’s law. Through this approach, we subject the monolayer to a range of lumen pressures at different rates and hence probe the relation between strain and tension in different regimes while computationally tracking actin dynamics and their mechanical effect at the tissue scale. Slow pressure changes relative to the actin dynamics allow the tissue to accommodate large strain variations. However, under sudden pressure reductions, the tissue develops buckling patterns and folds with different degrees of symmetry-breaking to store excess tissue area. These insights allow us to pattern epithelial folds through rationally directed buckling. Our study establishes a new approach for engineering epithelial morphogenetic events.

This PhD Discussion session will be held at Tower I, 11th floor Baobab room, at 10:00am.

Sostenibilidad en el PCB (spanish)
2022-12-02 10:00 - 14:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, IBEC, Baldiri i Reixac, Barcelona
En este seminario, Glòria Pladellorens, jefa de Calidad, Seguridad y Medio Ambiente del PCB, nos explicará todas las acciones que se están llevando a cabo desde PCB para avanzar hacia un parque científico más sostenible.
El comité de sostenibilidad ha invitado a Glòria a dar esta charla que será una muy buena oportunidad para resolver todas esas dudas que nos planteamos y compartir nuestras inquietudes e ideas para tener un entorno de trabajo más sostenible.

This seminar will be in Spanish, a translated report will be prepared and distributed among the non-Spanish speakers.
All members of research groups in the process of My green lab certification are strongly encouraged to attend.

PhD Thesis Defence: Adrián López Canosa
2022-12-12 11:00 - 13:00 | Eduard Fontseré – Facultat de Física de la UB
Microphysiological Systems for the Evaluation of Biomaterials in Regenerative Therapies

Author: Adrián López Canosa, Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies

This thesis defence will take place at “Sala de Graus Eduard Fontseré” at 11:00h.

Information

IBEC Seminar: Xavier Rovira-Clavé
2022-12-21 11:30 - 13:30 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, IBEC, Baldiri i Reixac, Barcelona
Epitope barcoding and subcellular high-plex imaging reveal clonal tumor patch behaviors
Xavier Rovira-Clavé, PhD
Intratumoral heterogeneity is a seminal feature of human tumors contributing to tumor progression and response to treatment. Current technologies are still largely unsuitable to accurately track phenotypes and clonal evolution within tumors, especially in response to genetic manipulations. In this seminar I will present our recent development of epitopes for imaging using combinatorial tagging (EpicTags), which we coupled to multiplexed ion beam imaging (EpicMIBI), for in situ tracking of barcodes within tissue microenvironments. Using EpicMIBI, we dissected the spatial component of cell lineages and phenotypes in xenograft models of small-cell lung cancer. We observed emergent properties from mixed clones leading to the preferential expansion of clonal patches for both neuroendocrine and non-neuroendocrine cancer cell states in these models. In a tumor model harboring a fraction of PTEN-deficient cancer cells, we observed a non-autonomous increase of clonal patch size in PTEN wild-type cancer cells. Thus, EpicMIBI facilitates in situ interrogation of cell-intrinsic and cell-extrinsic processes involved in intratumoral heterogeneity and it is posed to help reveal principles and mechanisms of tissue developmental processes, in both normal and malignant growth, that will thus accelerate therapeutic discoveries.

Dr. Xavier Rovira-Clavé is an instructor in the laboratory of Professor Garry Nolan in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University, where he develops and applies multiparameter technologies to study tissue biology in models of cancer and infectious diseases. In 2016, he received his PhD in Immunology from the University of Barcelona under the supervision of Dr. Enric Espel and Dr. Manuel Reina. He also trained for a year in cancer biology studies as a visiting PhD student in the group of Dr. Gregory Emery at the University of Montreal. He has published 12 articles, including some in leading journals such as Cancer Cell and Immunity. He holds 3 granted patents. He has received 5 competitive fellowships, including the prestigious LLS Career Development Award and the EMBO postdoctoral fellowship. His areas of research include cancer, the immune system, and infectious diseases. His technical expertise includes highly multiplexed tissue imaging (spatial proteomics), single-cell assays, molecular biology approaches, cell culture, in vitro co-culture systems, engineered tumors, murine models, genome editing, bioconjugation strategies, assay automation, and single-cell spatial data analysis. His recent research efforts have been focused in the development of imaging technologies to subcellularly locate structurally unmodified drugs at the nanometer scale, track subclonal growth in situ, and co-detect multiple biomolecular species (RNA, DNA, and protein) to enable new understanding of spatial structures at the molecular, cellular and tissue levels with the long-term goal to improve disease management.

IBEC Seminar: Manuel Valero
2023-01-11 12:00 - 13:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, IBEC, Baldiri i Reixac, Barcelona
The role of inhibition in hippocampal coding
Manuel Valero, PhD NYU Neuroscience Institute, New York University (US)
The fundamental computation a single neuron performs is to integrate incoming excitatory and inhibitory inputs to decide whether to fire an action potential and feedback its activity into the network. Investigation of this synaptic computation requires access to the neuron subthreshold dynamics, whose state-of-art methodologies have remained unaltered for decades and are unrealistic for cell assemblies and behaving animals.
Instead of intracellular recording, we propose a method to optogenetically probe the membrane polarization of the cells with short depolarizing pulses using chronically implanted µLED probes (4 shanks with 3 µLED/shank). Light-sensitive neurons responded to one or more µLEDs and the spike numbers were used as a proxy for estimating relative changes in the membrane potential dynamics. Strikingly, induced spike responses gain sharply increased several-folds inside the preferred position (place fields) of the responsive cells. These results are compatible with a tuning curve model in the CA1 pyramidal cells where excitation and inhibition display a concerted and reciprocal relationship. When optogenetic stimulation was probed on non-place cells, majority of the putative non-place cells showed place-related activity. Finally, we optically probed neurons around sharp wave-ripples (SPW-Rs), hippocampal events considered a key mechanism for memory consolidation and action planning. In the short time window of SPW-R, excitatory and inhibitory neurons increased in parallel. As expected, optogenetic probing of the CA1 networks showed that, in contrast to the large gain within place fields, responsivity of pyramidal cells showed a robust decrease during SPW-Rs.
We have developed a method for studying the subthreshold dynamics of individual cells in chronic recordings using novel high-resolution optical stimulation as a proxy for membrane polarization. These experiments disclosed a reciprocal interaction between inhibition and excitation along the place fields of CA1 and demonstrated that the same exact perturbation can bring about opposite responses during exploration and transient SPW-Rs.

PhD Thesis Defence: Ignasi Granero Moya
2023-01-12 15:00 - 17:00
STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF MECHANICAL FORCE ON NUCLEO-CYTOPLASMIC TRANSPORT

Author: Ignasi Granero Moya, Cellular and molecular mechanobiology

This thesis defence will take place at “Facultat de Medicina de la UB (Hospital Clínc)” at 15:00. Room to be determined.

IRB Research Node/IBEC Joint Seminar: Jolanda van Leeuwen
2023-01-18 12:00 - 14:00 | Auditori Antoni Caparrós, PCB, Tower D, c/Baldiri Reixac 4-8, Barcelona, Spain
Date: Wednesday 18 January 2023, 12:00h
Place: Audiorium Room, PCB
Speaker: Jolanda van Leeuwen, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
Title: Systematic analysis of genetic suppression interactions
Host: Patrick Aloy (IRB) & Benedetta Bolognesi (IBEC)
Abstract:
Recent genome sequencing efforts have identified people that are healthy despite carrying mutations that have been directly associated with severe early-onset Mendelian diseases. These resilient individuals may carry secondary mutations elsewhere in the genome that can compensate for the deleterious effect of the disease-associated mutation, a phenomenon referred to as genetic suppression. Identification of the protective mutations could highlight strategies for therapeutic intervention, but we currently lack the expertise to identify the suppressor mutations among the millions of variants scattered across the genomes of resilient individuals.
I will discuss how we use systematic genetic suppression interaction screens in the budding yeast and cultured human cells to dissect gene function and pathway connectivity, and to define conserved properties of genetic suppression that we can use to predict suppression interactions between genomic variants across species.

IRB Research Node/IBEC Joint Seminar: Nunilo Cremades
2023-01-19 09:30 - 11:30 | Sala Félix Serratosa – PCB, c/ Baldiri i reixac 10-12, Barcelona, Spain, 08028, Spain
Date: Thursday 19 January 2023, 9:30h
Place: Felix Serratosa Hall, PCB
Speaker: Nunilo Cremades, PhD – Associate Professor at Dept. Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology and Group Leader at Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), University of Zaragoza, Spain
Title: Liquid-liquid phase separation and co-aggregation of neurodegenerative disease-related alpha-synuclein and Tau proteins
Host: Xavier Salvatella (IRB) & Benedetta Bolognesi (IBEC)
Abstract:
Spatial segregation in the cell can be achieved through the formation of protein-rich liquid-like dense bodies, termed biomolecular condensates or liquid droplets, through a process known as liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS). Emerging evidence supports the hypothesis that aberrant protein-driven LLPS and the transition of the liquid droplets to solid-like structures might be a relevant cellular pathway leading to the formation of amyloid, toxic aggregates that are often a hallmark of relevant neurodegenerative diseases. A number of experimental studies have highlighted the flexible, typically disordered and ‘multivalent’ nature of the constituent proteins in these liquid-like condensates, although less is known about the particular molecular determinants governing the growth and maturation of these condensates into more solid-like states. While the LLPS process of Tau, the protein that is generally associated with Alzheimer´s disease, has been recently clarified, that of alpha-synuclein (αS), the protein linked to Parkinson´s disease, remains obscure. In this talk, I will show our recent findings that demonstrate that αS actively phase-separates into liquid condensates by electrostatic complex coacervation with positively charged polypeptides such as Tau. By combining a set of advanced biophysical techniques, we have been able to characterize αS/Tau LLPS and identified key factors leading to the co-aggregation of both proteins inside the coacervates. The mechanism of co-aggregation between αS and Tau that we have identified could be the basis for the in vivo formation of αS/Tau hetero-aggregates observed in the brains of patients suffering from synucleinopathies.

IBEC Seminar (online): Sam Hall
2023-01-20 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
Presentation of Open Research Europe publishing plataform
Sam Hall, from Open Research Euorpe
Open Research Europe is the European Commission’s open access publishing platform for research stemming from Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe funding. In this webinar Senior Content Acquisition Editor Sam Hall will show how the platform enables the rapid dissemination of results and facilitates open and constructive research discussion, and maximizes the discoverability and credit for researchers and their work. Sam will also explain the funder-pays model which means that all publication fees are met by the European Commission at no cost to the researcher or the project.

Sam Hall is a Senior Content Acquisition Editor for F1000, commissioning articles and Collections for Open Research Europe. Launched in March 2021, Open Research Europe is an open access publishing Platform for research stemming from Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and/or Euratom funding across all subject areas. Within this broad remit, Sam focusses on the research area of Engineering and Technology, and most recently the Data Note article type. Sam has almost 10 years of experience working in publishing, and in this time has worked in contrasting companies and settings. This has included society publishers, start-ups, and international governmental organizations.
Link Teams here

PhD Thesis Defence: Xavier Arqué
2023-01-24 11:00 - 13:00 | Aula Magna, Faculty of Pharmacy, Av. Joan XXIII s/n, Barcelona, Spain
Unraveling the Fundamental Aspects of Enzyme-powered Micromotors

Author: Xavier Arqué, Smart Nano-Bio-Devices Lab

This thesis defence will take place at “Aula Magna” Building A, Faculty of Pharmacy,
University of Barcelona (Campus Diagonal, Av. de Joan XXIII, 27-31, 08028 Barcelona) at 11:00

PhD Discussions: Gerardo Ceada Torres
2023-02-03 10:00 - 13:00 | Sala Dolors Aleu, Cluster II, IBEC, Baldiri i Reixac, Barcelona
Role of Eph/Ephrin in the Compartmentalization of the Intestinal Stem Cell Niche
Gerardo Ceada Torres, Integrative cell and tissue dynamics Group
The intestinal epithelium is a monolayer of cells that covers the inner surface of the gut. It protects against pathogens, absorbs nutrients, and secretes hormones and other molecules. This monolayer is folded into finger-like protrusions composed of differentiated cells, called villi, and invaginations, called crypts, where stem cells reside. Essential features of the intestinal epithelium such as folding of the crypt, spatial distribution of different cell types, and cellular movements from crypt to villus-like domains can be recapitulated in vitro in intestinal organoids. Direct force measurements in mouse intestinal organoids grown on soft hydrogels show that tightly regulated cell-ECM and cell-cell forces compartmentalizes the tissue into crypts- and villus-like domains. A dynamic mechanical boundary composed of basally constricted cells is established between the stem cell niche and differentiated cells of the villus-like region. The Eph/Ephrin signaling pathway has been proposed as a key regulator of compartmentalization and cell positioning in the intestinal epithelium. Whether and how Eph/Ephrin signaling governs the mechanical phenotype observed at the crypt-villus boundary remains, however, an open question. We are currently addressing this question by genetically perturbing Eph/Ephrin signaling in intestinal organoids. Preliminary data show that EphB2/3 KO organoids display defects in cell positioning, reduced basal constriction at the crypt-villus boundary and aberrant size of the proliferative and differentiated compartments.

This PhD Discussion session will be held at Tower I, 11th floor Baobab room, at 10:00am.
