Researchers working in the Development and Growth Control Lab at IRB Barcelona located at the Barcelona Science Park reveal that the Dpp gene (BMP in humans) plays a double role in the structural organisation and growth of the wings of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Published in the journal eLife, this study paves the way to studying vertebrate development and congenital defects in humans.
Promoting innate detoxification mechanisms in the body and discovering which supplements increase the efficacy of those biochemical pathways could be an efficient strategy to reduce the cellular oxidative stress and protect our health, according to an article published in the journal Food Chemistry, by the researchers Rafael Franco, from the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona at the Barcelona Science Park and Eva Martínez Pinilla, from the Institute of Neurosciences of Asturias (INEUROPA) and the University of Oviedo.
Esteve at the Barcelona Science Park co-leads the NGN-PET consortium, that unites the expertise and knowledge of industry partners from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and academia for the development of novel, more efficacious treatments for chronic pain of neuropathic origin. NGN-PET is a project launched in the framework of the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI), the largest public-private partnership (PPP) for health research worldwide co-funded by the EU and the European pharmaceutical industry.
Experts from the Institute of Biomedicine of Barcelona (IBUB), located at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB) have created a new technique to measure the energy production and use in brown adipose tissue, a key organ in obesity due its capacity to oxidize fat and dissipate energy as heat. This method, published in the scientific journal Advanced Science, improved the precision of previous techniques to fight obesity.
2017 sees the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) celebrate its first ten years of research activity. lt’s been a hair-raisingly fast climb up to the near top of the tree of centres in the Catalan research arena, with IBEC already holding its own alongside bigger and more established organizations for scientific output, number of ERC grants, patents, spin-offs, training programmes, national or EU-level stamps and endorsements, and other important indicators. Yesterday, the 10th Anniversary Commemorative Ceremony and this week’s Symposium on Bioengineering for Future Medicine at the AXA Auditorium kicked off the celebrations.
Thanks to the cells of a patient with a rare neurodegenerative disease -the Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome (GSS)- researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), at the Barcelona Science Park, and the Institute of Neurosciences of the UB have created neurons showing other neurodegenerative processes which so far had not been related to this minority disease. This scientific finding could open new doors to the study of neurodegenerative pathologies with diagnoses similar to Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s according to the study published in the journal Molecular Neurobiology.
Mind the Byte, with offices at the Barcelona Science Park and the Copenhagen Bioscience Park, has opened a new financial round through the equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. With this round, that expects to raise at least 320.000 euros, the company will keep developing its SaaS platform and continue the implementation and expansion of its business development plan.
Minoryx Therapeutics – a drug development company specialized in the discovery and development of new drugs for orphan diseases, which has R& D laboratories at the Barcelona Science Park– announces that it has successfully completed its phase 1 trial with its lead compound MIN-102 targeting X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD), a life threatening orphan CNS disease with high unmet medical need.
A team led by researchers of the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB) –at the Barcelona Science Park– and the Research Institute of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (IIB-Sant Pau) shows for the first time, the three-dimensional structure of the homodimeric androgen receptor ligand-binding domain, a structure that eluded researchers for years. This new structure of the nuclear receptor allows explaining more than forty mutations related to prostate cancer, one of the most common worldwide and especially in Catalonia, as well as known developing disorders.
Sequentia Biotech, based at the Barcelona Science Park, has launched a cloud computing platform called A.I.R. (Artificial Intelligence RNAseq), the first predictive bioinformatics tool that automatically analyzes mass transcriptomic data (ie data linked to the RNA) from the genome of any species, generated by the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, providing a complete report in less than 24 hours.
