18/12/2017 - Institutional news
Gasol Foundation, set up by NBA players Pau and Marc Gasol, and the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) have signed an agreement to develop joint research projects. The aim of this accord is to establish a collaboration framework between the organisations with regard to biotech research and development in the field of childhood obesity. This will allow them to work together to gain competitive funding and publicise the results of their joint projects. The agreement will promote the cross-training of staff from the two entities, and the IMIM team will provide methodological support in the design and development of the Gasol Foundation's public health interventions, as well as in the analysis and dissemination of the data they obtain. A task that will be carried out by the IMIM's Cardiovascular Risk and Nutrition research group.
04/12/2017 - Press release
What distinguishes Homo sapiens from other living beings? And the group of mammals? What makes them different? These are the questions that researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) have been trying to answer, together with the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences at the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). To do this, they analysed the already-sequenced genomes of 68 mammals and identified 6,000 families of genes that are only found in these animals. These are genes with no homologues outside mammals, in other words, they are not present in other hairless species. In humans, it is estimated that they represent 2.5% of the genes that code for proteins. The work was led by Dr. José Luis Villanueva-Cañas, a member of the IMIM's Evolutionary Genomics research group, and currently a researcher at the Evolutionary Biology Institute (UPF-CSIC), and Dr. Mar Albà, an ICREA researcher at both the IMIM and the Biomedical Informatics Research Programme (GRIB). The study also involved Dr. David Andreu's group from the UPF's Department of Experimental and Health Sciences. It has been published in the journal Genome Biology and Evolution.
Més informació "Genes identified that distinguish mammals from other animals"
15/11/2017 - General information
Each November, the Movember Foundation encourages men from all over the world to grow a moustache to raise awareness and funds for men's health research. The Healthcare Research Group at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) is the Spanish coordinator for an international study funded by this foundation, involving more than 5,000 patients from twelve different countries. The study, entitled "Prostate Cancer Outcomes - Compare and Reduce Variation" (PCO-CRV for short), focuses on men diagnosed with localised prostate cancer and has a global allocation of 4.6 million euros that Movember contributes, raised by crowdfunding campaigns around the world that are especially active during the month of November.
Més informació "Movember: researching how to improve quality of life after prostate cancer"
03/11/2017 - Press release
Dr. Joaquim Bellmunt, director of the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and Associate Professor at the University of Harvard, at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, is one of the first authors of a new international study that has mapped genome of bladder cancer. As part of the TCGA project (The Cancer Genome Atlas), the researchers have reported their final analysis of 412 tumour samples, providing the most accurate genetic description to date of this type of cancer. This will enable the analysis of new personalised treatment hypotheses for this disease. The study was published in the journal Cell. Dr. Bellmunt has stated that thanks to this work, we now "have a much broader perspective on the different varieties of urinary bladder cancer and its genetic alterations". Even so, the head of the IMIM stresses that "it is necessary to continue researching the best treatments and confirm hypothesised new treatment methods."
The Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) have just published a comment in the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery where they explain the excellent results from eTOX, a project that has facilitated a new model for collaboration among pharmaceutical companies, as well as between these and academia, where data and knowledge are shared for the purposes of improving the toxicological evaluation of drugs. Apart from the results obtained, which are extremely valuable, the project is a model of Open Innovation, where various public and private stakeholders join forces and actively collaborate. In addition, it has confirmed the enormous value of the data obtained in the regulatory studies conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, and has verified the fact that exploiting these requires a significant effort in terms of extraction, standardisation, and integration.
Més informació "Open innovation improving drug safety evaluation"
13/09/2017 - Press release
The five-year project, Enhancing Translational Safety Assessment through Integrative Knowledge Management (eTRANSAFE), aims to develop an advanced data integration infrastructure together with innovative computational methods to improve the security in drug development process and is funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (IMI 2) together with the pharmaceutical industry. The eTRANSAFE consortium is a private and public partnership of 8 academic institutions, 6 SMEs and 12 pharmaceutical companies, and is coordinated by the Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) and led by the pharmaceutical company Novartis and Bayer AG. The eTRANSAFE project aims at improving the safety assessment across the drug discovery and development process by applying bioinformatics approaches to shared preclinical and clinical data to systematically analyse the translatability of effects. Thus, enabling the optimisation of resources and the development of safer medicines.
22/09/2017 - Institutional news
Today, the highest representatives of the universities and research centres of Catalonia (60 institutions, representing around 90% of the university and research community) have met to assess the current situation in Catalonia resulting from the actions of the Spanish Government over the last few days. The meeting was also attended by representatives of the trade unions and students' associations. It has been concluded that the good repute of the academic and research institutions of Catalonia has been undermined by their inclusion by the Ministry of Finance and Civil Service in a list of institutions whose budgetary powers have been rescinded and which are, therefore, in the eyes of the Ministry, suspected of being liable to fraudulent behaviour. This list has been communicated to the banks in order to block and assume control of the management of ordinary financial affairs, with no form of direct prior notification to the universities and research centres. These actions are a threat to academic and research activity, including that funded by European Union resources or private funds, and damage both the reputation and the credibility of the institutions at an international level, thereby putting in peril their participation in international projects, and their ability to attract and retain talent.
Més informació "Communiqué from the universities and research centres of Catalonia"
29/08/2017 - Press release
Researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and IDIAP Jordi Gol have just published an article showing that autoimmune diseases significantly increase cardiovascular risk as well as overall mortality. This is particularly pronounced in people suffering rheumatoid arthritis or systemic lupus erythematosus. In addition, it has been seen that inflammatory bowel diseases, such as Crohn's or ulcerative colitis, increase the risk of stroke and death through any cause. The article is published this month in the journal Heart. The 6-year study followed a cohort of nearly 1 million people aged between 35 and 85, with no history of cardiovascular disease. The large sample size allowed the estimation of cardiovascular event incidence and mortality in people diagnosed with autoimmune diseases. Some of these diseases are relatively frequent, so their impact is quite significant. It is estimated that rheumatoid arthritis affects between 150,000 and 200,000 people in Spain, and somewhere around 100,000 people suffer Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.
Més informació "Autoimmune diseases increase cardiovascular and mortality risk"
11/07/2017 - Press release
Researchers at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) have shown for the first time that immunoglobulin M, secreted by the human intestine, plays a key role in maintaining the diversity of intestinal flora by including and maintaining microorganisms that are beneficial to our health. These results have been published in the prestigious scientific journal Immunity. "We have discovered that, in addition to immunoglobulin A, (IgA), immunoglobulin M (IgM), secreted by the human intestine, interacts with the intestinal microbiota and actively participates in maintaining its diversity. In addition, we have demonstrated that this immunoglobulin is part of an immunological memory system through which our organism is able to recognise and adapt to its microbial environment", explain Giuliana Magri and Laura Comerma, researchers from the B Cell Biology research group at the IMIM and first authors of the article.
Més informació "Key immunological mechanism for regulating intestinal flora discovered"
01/06/2017 - Institutional news
The Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute announced today that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with Chemotargets, an IMIM's spin-off. The aim of the collaboration is to further understand the mechanism of action of some active hits in leukemia discovered at IJC, and exploit this information to identify new chemical entities with improved pharmacology and safety profiles using Chemotargets’ precision modeling platform. The acute myeloid leukemia (AML) research group, directed by Dr. Ruth M. Risueño, recently published a study in which the importance of serotonin receptor subtype 1 (HTR1) in AML was highlighted (Etxabe et al. Leukemia 2017). “We observed that AML cells differentially expressed HTR1 compared with healthy blood cells and the most primitive hematopoietic fraction; in fact, HTR1B expression in AML patient samples correlated with the clinical outcome”, said Dr. Risueño. “Based on these results and other projects developed in the group, we discovered some active hits on HTR1 and other receptors with antileukemia effects; these represent excellent starting points for a drug discovery program and Chemotargets’ platform will be of great help in this process”.
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