Institutional news

IBEC Director Josep Samitier was visiting Peru last week as part of a delegation of representatives from Severo Ochoa and Maria de Maeztu research centres in Spain.

The visit to Lima, organised by MINECO, which bestows the two types of Excellence awards, aimed to bring together the top Spanish institutions with those of the Pacific Alliance – Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru.

Each of the eight Spanish centres presented their research and international strategies, and they had the chance to hear about the same from Pacific Alliance centers, as well as identifying potential synergies.

Junior group leader Pere-Roca Cusachs is set to take part in the second Pint of Science event next week, a science festival that will take place simultaneously in a dozen countries all over the world. In its own words, Pint of Science aims to “bring some of the most brilliant scientists to your local pub to discuss their latest research and findings with you”.

At 20:00 on Monday 23rd May Pere will giving his talk, “Mecanobiologia: quan amb química no n’hi ha prou”, at Bacanal Café on c/Sepúlveda 164, as patrons enjoy a pint – or, more likely, a caña. He will share the evening with Salvador Aznar Benitah (ICREA -IRB), who will be talking about “Células madre, relojes biológicos y envejecimiento”. Other scientists taking part in the three-day event this year – which will take place at several venues including the Michael Collins pub, Mau Mau and the BlackLab Brewhouse – include researchers from ICFO, ISGlobal, the UB and the UPC.

This week, IBEC scientists and other staff from the PCB are enjoying some special workshops given by Leica.

From Tuesday to Thursday IBEC is the host institution in Spain of Leica’s European Tour 2016, which allows researchers to get hands-on with some of the company’s most cutting-edge microscopes and other equipment.

The technologies being presented and demonstrated at this week’s workshops are the DMi8 inverted microscope with Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching (FRAP) module, their SP8 X Confocal Microscope with WLL and Hybrid Detectors, HyVolution confocal super-resolution imaging, and the Leica TCS SP8 with Digital LightSheet. Researchers are able to test their own samples in these pieces of equipment.

IBEC has signed a collaboration agreement with Bioibérica S.A., a company specialised in the R&D, production and sale of biomolecules and new technologies for the pharmaceutical, veterinary and agrochemical industries. It’s the latest success story in IBEC’s active pursuit of the establishment of research projects with industry partners who share its commitment to bringing high-quality health research and technologies to market and the patient.

Together, IBEC – specifically its Nanomalaria joint unit with ISGlobal, led by Xavier Fernández-Busquets – and Bioibérica, which since its formation in 1975 has focused on the investigation and production of biomolecules extracted from animal tissue with significant biological and therapeutic properties, will explore ways of combining their expertise to achieve advances in future medicine.

To coincide with National Cystic Fibrosis Day 2016, IBEC and the Catalan Association of Cystic Fibrosis (ACFQ) have organized an event, “The present and future of Cystic Fibrosis”, which is taking place on 27th April at the Barradas auditorium (Rambla Just Oliveras 56, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat).

As part of IBEC’s new ‘Focus on…’ series of outreach activities, which will highlight diseases for which the institute’s researchers are working towards finding solutions, the day will raise awareness about and present research results and clinical advances relating to CF, which is one of the most common serious genetic diseases in Catalonia. IBEC’s Bacterial Infections: Antimicrobial Therapies group’s projects researching the enzyme that promotes the growth of the bacteria linked to this disease, and possible therapeutic targets, has been supported by the ACFQ since 2009.

The AXA Research Fund, the international scientific philanthropy initiative of global insurer AXA, officially announced last week that it will devote €15.6m in 2016 to 44 new research projects with leading academic institutions in 16 countries.

IBEC’s two-year project, “Novel approaches for Pandemic Virus Targeting Using Adaptive Polymers”, is led by new junior group leader Lorenzo Albertazzi and aims to harness nanotechnology to introduce a whole new class of tools to fight viruses. This and the 43 other new projects were announced last Friday at an event in Paris, bringing together AXA executives and experts, members of the AXA Research Fund scientific community and academic partners, and other stakeholders.

Today and tomorrow, 22 hopeful candidates are visiting IBEC for their interviews for IBEC´s International PhD Programme positions.

The candidates, who represent 12 countries, have been selected from the more than 150 applicants who applied for the programme’s nine positions, which are supported by Severo Ochoa and La Caixa. It’s the first ever time that IBEC has held mass interviews of this type, as the PhD programme is new for this year and forms part of the institute’s Strategy for 2014-2017 in the area of attracting the best talent from all over the world via a transparent, open and international selection process.

Representatives from the Associació Catalana de Fibrosi Quística (ACFQ) came to IBEC on 22nd March to meet researchers and discuss the focus of their continuing support of investigation into the disease.

The visit took place in the framework of some exploratory groundwork in preparation for a potential new initiative involving the Obra Social “La Caixa” to focus on support for rare disorders.

Eduard Torrent’s Bacterial Infections: Antimicrobial Therapies group’s projects researching the enzyme that promotes the growth of the bacteria linked to this disease, and possible therapeutic targets, has been supported by the ACFQ since 2009.

This week, IBEC will once again be taking part in the annual Recerca en Directe science fair, which is co-organised by the PCB and the Obra Social ”la Caixa” which aims to bring science to the public, enable dialogue between society and researchers, and encourage young people to consider science as a career.

The event, which is in its 14th year and is supported by Barcelona City Council and the University of Barcelona, will take place in CosmoCaixa Barcelona from Wednesday to Saturday.