IBEC Archives - Page 14 of 15 - Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

February 2, 2018February 2, 2018

Pere Roca-Cusachs wins City of Barcelona award

Pere Roca-Cusachs, group leader at IBEC and assistant professor at the University of Barcelona, has won the 2017 City of Barcelona Award for the life sciences.

The prize comes after the publication of his study in Cell last year, where he identified a mechanism by which tissue rigidity regulates cell survival and proliferation, as well as its implications in diseases such as cancer and liver and lung fibrosis.

The City of Barcelona Awards are granted by Barcelona City Council, and the jury – Patrick Aloy, Juan Valcárcel, Cristina Subidas, Elena Casacuberta, and Neus Agell – were unanimous in their choice of Pere for the prize.

May 10, 2018February 2, 2018

Joining forces with FEDER to collaborate on solutions for rare diseases

IBEC has signed a collaboration agreement with the Federación Española de Enfermedades Raras (FEDER), a non-profit organization that represents the three million people suffering from rare diseases throughout the country.

Rare diseases are those that affect fewer than 5 out of every 10,000 inhabitants. According to the WHO, there are about 7,000 such diseases affecting 7% of the world’s population, so altogether they affect a huge number of people – and they can appear at any stage of life. The agreement with IBEC will connect the institute with patients’ associations to develop projects together that have a direct application according to the needs of sufferers.

January 29, 2018

Education award for IBEC’s outreach activities

IBEC has been awarded the “Segell de Qualitat Educativa” (seal of educative quality) by the Consell De Coordinació Pedagògica of Barcelona City Council’s Institute of Education, an educational network that includes 155 institutions and organizations that offer educational activities.

This recognition is of the quality of IBEC’s outreach activities that the institute carries out for school pupils, teachers, the general public, and many other audiences.

October 10, 2016October 7, 2016

IBEC Seminar: Scaling up in Systems Biology: from a minimal cell to microbiomes

Scaling up in Systems Biology: from a minimal cell to microbiomes

October 7, 2016

IBEC Seminar: Scaling up in Systems Biology: from a minimal cell to microbiomes

Scaling up in Systems Biology: from a minimal cell to microbiomes

October 10, 2016October 6, 2016

IBEC Seminar: Targeting fibroblast durotaxis as anti-fibrotic therapy

Targeting fibroblast durotaxis as anti-fibrotic therapy

October 6, 2016

IBEC Seminar: Targeting fibroblast durotaxis as anti-fibrotic therapy

Targeting fibroblast durotaxis as anti-fibrotic therapy

September 6, 2023October 4, 2016

ERC funding for new diabetes approach at IBEC

IBEC’s Dr. Javier Ramón is one of just six researchers in Catalonia to have been awarded a 2016 Starting Grant by the European Research Council (ERC).

The senior researcher in the Biomimetic Systems for Cell Engineering group won funding for his project ‘Diabetes Approach by Multi-Organ-on-a-Chip’ (DAMOC) from Europe’s most prestigious funding body.

With the support, which will last for up to five years, Javier will start a new line to design a innovative new tool to test drugs for diabetes. As well as improving drug testing approaches, the multi-organ-on-a-chip device will provide new therapies to prevent the loss of beta cell mass and defects in the glucose uptake in skeletal muscle associated with type 2 diabetes.

“This project will give me the opportunity to have a multidisciplinary group of researchers working together from the beginning in a synchronized way, the most rewarding experience that a researcher can have,” he says.

August 16, 2017September 28, 2016

New strategies to combat malaria: heparin and nanomedicine

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and the biotech firm Bioiberica have signed a partnership agreement to study the development of new compounds derived from heparin to combat malaria.

The partnership, which was officially announced this morning at the BioSpain meeting in Bilbao, is based on the research undertaken by Dr Xavier Fernández-Busquets, head of IBEC and ISGlobal’s joint Nanomalaria unit, engaged in developing specific antimalaria therapies, and the R&D project of Bioiberica, world leader in heparin production, to seek new applications of this molecule.

Every year malaria infects 200 million people worldwide and causes half a million deaths. For several decades it has been known that when the malaria parasite enters the bloodstream, it invades the liver cells to produce thousands of merozoites – a stage in the life cycle of the parasite – that enter into the circulation and infect red blood cells, managing to evade the immune system.

August 16, 2017September 14, 2016

Ferrer, IBEC and Mind the Byte join forces to study new molecules against cancer metastasis

The study will take as a starting point the pioneering research conducted by IBEC’s Xavier Trepat on how cadherins interact in metastasis

The pharmaceutical company Ferrer has created a consortium with the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the bioinformatics company Mind the Byte, located at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), to study the development of new therapeutic molecules against cancer metastasis.

The work will follow the research on cadherin interaction and its role in cells that cause metastasis conducted by Dr. Xavier Trepat, ICREA professor at IBEC and one of the few scientists to have won three grants from the European Research Council (ERC).