IBEC has been designated one of five EU Centers of Excellence in Health in new EC report Blog Post

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) has been designated one of five European Centres of Excellence (CoE) in Health in a report by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research & Innovation on European Union international positioning. The other European organizations named as Health CoEs are: CEA Tech- Leti (Grenoble, France); the Trinity College Dublin (Germany); el King’s College London (United Kingdom) and the Erasmus University Medical Centre Rotterdam (Belgium, Netherlands).

 

IBEC’s first EMBO Young Investigator Blog Post

IBEC junior group leader at PCB and UB assistant professor Pere Roca-Cusachs has been accepted into the prestigious EMBO Young Investigator Programme. EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization, chooses some of the best young group leaders in Europe through a highly competitive annual selection. Pere presented his research plan for the next five years to an international panel in Heidelberg at the beginning of October.

 

The United States brings together five labs worldwide to study a fatal form of epilepsy Blog Post

Scientists from the US, Canada and Spain, among them Joan Guinovart from IRB Barcelona, are poised to perform joint research with the aim to find a treatment for Lafora disease, the most severe type of epilepsy in humans. Joan J. Guinovart’s lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) –based at the Barcelona Science Park–  forms part of this recently launched international alliance. The National Health Institutes has awarded the consortium $8.5 over five years. The US organisation Chelsea’s Hope, a charity formed by families affected by this disease, has promoted this international collaboration.

 

Midas Clean launches Baula, a family of effervescent tablets that start the 3.0 era in the ‘cleaning’ field Blog Post

Under the name Baula, the start-up Midas Clean, based at the Barcelona Science Park, has launched to market a new family of effervescent tablets that mark the start of the 3.0 era in the cleaning sector by combining efficacy (1.0) with ecology (2.0). These are ‘first in class’ –products developed by means of a highly innovative processing technology and under social, economical and environmental sustainability criteria– thereby offering an equal or superior performance to that of high-end equivalent proposal based on a non-ecological formulation. 

 

Bioinformatics Mind the Byte enters the Japanese market Blog Post

Mind the Byte, a bioinformatics computational design company dedicated to pharmaceuticals products through big data and machine learning, has signed a distribution agreement with the Japanese company Filgen to access the bioinformatics market in Japan. Located at Parc Científic of Barcelona, the company expects to reach a turnover of 1.2 million Euros in 2020 in this country, a market it had no commercial presence until now.

 

Stat-Diagnostica attracts Siemens Venture Capital as a new investor Blog Post

Medical diagnostics company Stat-Diagnostica, based at the Barcelona Science Park, has closed an extension of its Series C financing with Siemens Venture Capital. Led by Gilde Healthcare, the Series C financing round also drew participation from existing investors, including Kurma Partners, Ysios Capital, Idinvest Partners, Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund, Caixa Capital Risc, and Axis. The additional proceeds will be used to support the 2017 European launch of its DiagCORE Near Patient Testing system. 

 

Researchers identify a key molecule in psoriasis development Blog Post

A study published in Journal of Investigative Dermatology has identified a potential therapeutic target for the treatment of psoriasis. The work shows that the TREX2 gene has a relevant role in the inflammatory response that develops during the illness. The research –led by researchers from the Department of Pathology and Experimental Therapeutics of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona and the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL)–  counts with the participation of experts from the Scientific and Technologic Centers of the UB (CCiTUB) based at the Barcelona Science Park (PCB).

Laboratorios Ordesa enters the pediatric dermatology market Blog Post

Laboratorios Ordesa, with a history of over 70 leading child nutrition, has now entered the dermatology market with the marketing of Pediatopic, a new product line for the care of atopic skin in children. Since 2007, Ordesa has had a R&D&I center at  Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB) from where the company actively takes part in clinical trials and national and international research programs to enhance the health and quality of life of individuals, especially during the maternal and child stage of life. 

 

IBEC, ISGlobal and Bioiberica join forces to study new strategies based on nanomedicine to combat malaria Blog Post

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 international Biospain meeting held in Bilbao.