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Xavier Trepat

Group leader

Cancer cells move to rigid environments like droplets 

Researchers from the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the University of Barcelona (UB) uncovered a similarity between liquid droplets and cell groups, revealing that surface tension helps cells to migrate towards stiffer environments. This new insight could help us to understand how cancer cells disseminate across tissues with different rigidity in our body.   Scientists … Read more

EMBL-IBEC Conference in the media

The EMBL-IBEC Conference, a three-day conference organized by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is featured in the journal ARA where international experts discussed how to reproduce human diseases in living systems generated in the laboratory.

Researcher Xavier Trepat wins the “Constantes y Vitales” award for his pioneering contributions to the mechanobiology field

The ICREA Research Professor at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Xavier Trepat, has been awarded with the “Constantes y Vitales” Award for Talent in Biomedical Research, awarded by the Atresmedia group, for his contributions to the field known as mechanobiology, that studies the effect of physical forces on living systems and their implication in pathologies such as cancer.

The intestinal organoids hit the media

The group led by Xavier Trepat at IBEC, together with Marino Arroyo, associate researcher at IBEC, and other international collaborators have developed intestinal organoids and measured cellular forces in order to decipher how the inner wall of this vital organ folds and moves.

Mechanical forces, half of the alphabet to understand life

Xavier Trepat and international experts remind us in a piece published in the Journal Nature by science writer Amber Dance, the crucial role of physics in order to understand biological entities such cells and organs, both in health and disease. In words of Trepat: “Understanding a cell without physics is like trying to write a book with only half the letters of the alphabet”.

Bioengineering against cancer: IBEC researchers receive funding from La Caixa

IBEC researchers Elena Martínez, Xavier Trepat and Pere Roca-Cusachs aim to understand the processes that promote metastasis in colorectal cancer using innovative bioengineering tools, such as bioprinting and microscopy capable of revealing forces at the cellular level.

The results will be translated into a device that will recreate the tumor environment from cancer cells derived from patients, as well as a new technology that will allow to visualize how physical forces affect the nuclei of metastatic cells.