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Researchers generate human heart grafts from human pluripotent stem cells

Foto2Scientists from IBEC, in collaboration with the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón in Spain and two other groups in the USA, have made a big leap in heart regeneration advances by achieving heart grafts from human pluripotent stem cells for the first time in less than one month.

The collaborators, working in Spain and the USA, describe in the journal Biomaterials how they decellularized human hearts, all of which had been determined not suitable for transplantation by the Spanish National Transplant Organization. They left the extracellular matrix, the structure that provides cells with structural and biochemical support, intact.

IBEC International PhD Programme interviews underway

PhD Programme interviewsToday 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.

The busiest week of the year

postersNext week will be a full one at IBEC, with several important events on the agenda.

Monday 28th September will see the arrival of Scientific Advisory Board for their annual two-day meeting with IBEC’s directorate. Among other things, the panel of experts from research and industry, who will be coming from as far afield as the USA and Singapore, will be reviewing the international candidates for the group leader and tenure track positions.

On Wednesday 30th September, IBEC’s 8th Annual Symposium will take place at Barcelona’s AXA auditorium.

Israel’s former Chief Scientist among visitors for TAU/IBEC symposium

tauNext week, top scientists from Tel Aviv University (TAU), including Israel’s former Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Science and Technology, are visiting Barcelona to take part in a joint symposium with IBEC.

With many similarities between Catalonia and Israel – which are almost neck-and-neck when it comes to research output in Science and Nature, with over 30 publications per million inhabitants and similar levels of funding under FP7 – this event builds on the fact-finding mission of Artur Mas and Barcelona-based scientists to Israel last year and is supported by AGAUR.

Symposium TAU-IBEC

Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine: Moving forward the convergence between life sciences, medicine and engineering at the nanoscale

Symposium TAU-IBEC

Nanobiotechnology and Nanomedicine: Moving forward the convergence between life sciences, medicine and engineering at the nanoscale

Genetic “editing” a new tool to fight inherited disease

CellforwebResearchers at the Hospital Clínic, IDIBAPS, the Hospital Sant Joan de Deu and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) have participated in a study, led by Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte of the Gene Expression Laboratory at California’s Salk Institute, that uses molecular “scissors” to remove mitochondrial mutations in mouse eggs.

For thousands of women worldwide who are carriers of a mitochondrial disease, having a healthy child can be a gamble.

IBEC researcher wins ERC Consolidator Grant for research into intestinal diseases

SONY DSCElena Martinez, head of IBEC’s Biomimetic Systems for Cell Engineering group, has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant to engineer models of the intestinal epithelium, an essential tool for understanding disease and tissue regeneration.

The highly sought-after ERC Consolidator grants are awarded to EU-based Principal Investigators with talent and proven potential who are still consolidating their own independent research team or programme. In this call, nearly 2528 proposals were submitted, of which 372 have been selected for funding.

Pluripotency for organ regeneration

The generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), especially the generation of patient-derived pluripotent stem cells suitable for disease modelling in vitro, opens the door for the potential translation of stem-cell … Read more

Master students

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is looking for Master candidates to apply for Master fellowships within the IBEC Master Programme for 2024. IBEC launches the 8th call of the Master Programme … Read more