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Xavier Trepat

Group leader

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.

How can we measure mechanical stress in living tissues?

A team of experts from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has published a review in the journal Nature Reviews Physics detailing the different techniques used to calculate mechanical stress in tissues, both in cell cultures and in vivo. Determining these mechanisms of mechanical stress is crucial to study processes linked to morphogenesis, homeostasis, and diseases such as cancer.

In order to work properly, living tissues need to continuously move, divide, reshape and perceive their microenvironment. In other words, they need to withstand certain mechanical stress derived from contact.

IBEC researchers explain “Durotaxis”, a cell migration mechanism with a potential role in several diseases

Xavier Trepat, group leader of the “Integrative cell and tissue dynamics” at IBEC together with Raimon Sunyer, Senior researcher in Trepat’s lab, have written a Primer in Current Biology magazine on “Durotaxis”, a cell migration mechanism that might have a role in several disease states that include the stiffening of tissues.

Embryo development, tumour progression or the immune response against pathogens requires cell migration.

Xavier Trepat receives the ERC Advanced Grant to lay the basis of a new generation of biological robots

The researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Xavier Trepat, has received the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) worth 2.5 million euros.

Thanks to this grant the expert and his group will be able to study the mechanical properties of the epithelium in 3D and to lay the foundations for a pioneering technology called “Epifluidics”, which will allow the design of biological robots.

The EMBL-IBEC Winter Conference comes to an end with a huge success in terms of participation

This week, the conference organised by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) brought together a total of 200 international experts in the field of bioengineering at La Pedrera building in Barcelona.

At the opening of the event, which was led by the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, attention was drawn to Barcelona’s consolidation as an international centre of research and knowledge.

IBEC recieves funding for three projects thanks to la Marató 2018

Three IBEC projects have been selected to receive funding from “La Marató 2018: Against Cancer.” One of the projects is led by the researcher Pere Roca-Cusachs and the other two are co-led by the researchers Xavier Trepat and Núria Montserrat.

The awarding ceremony took place on October 30 in the Auditorium of the Academy of Medical and Health Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. In this edition, over the 188 evaluated projects, 43 have been selected by an international committee of experts in cancer based on their excellence, methodology and relevance. La Marató de TV3, together with Catalunya Ràdio, broadcasts its annual telethon to raise funds for scientific research into various diseases with a different theme each year.