Dr. Bellmunt returns to Barcelona after almost 4 years in the US heading up the bladder cancer unit in one of America's top cancer hospitals, and an international benchmark in cancer treatment, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Joaquim Bellmunt Molins, a genitourinary cancer specialist and a world leader in bladder and kidney cancer, has been selected to be Director of Research at the Parc de Salut Mar (PSMAR) in Barcelona and director of the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM). Putting a professional with both clinical and management experience at an international level at the head of the PSMAR's research and as director of the IMIM will help research strategies align with healthcare goals and increasingly position the institution as global leader in research applied to patients. His incorporation will be effective as of November 14. Dr. Bellmunt was the head of the Solid Tumours section at Hospital del Mar from 2006 to 2013, leading the clinical research into genitourinary cancer at the IMIM. In March 2013, he was given the job of directing the Bladder Cancer Centre, a consortium comprising the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, one of the best cancer centres in the world, and the Brighman and Women's Hospital. During his time in the US, he was appointed associate professor of medicine at Harvard University, a position he kept until his transition to our university. During this time, he maintained his links with the IMIM and PSMAR.
Més informació "Dr. Joaquim Bellmunt, new director of the IMIM"
3/10/2016 - Press release
A study led by researchers at the IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) has analysed the number of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) detected at high concentrations in the population of the US and found relationships with socioeconomic factors, including gender, race, body mass index, education and poverty. More than 10% of the US population has 10 or more POPs, each and all of them at a 'top 10' concentration; that is, at a concentration above the 90th. percentile. POPs are a group of chemical contaminants that humans can barely excrete and that degrade very slowly, therefore accumulating in our bodies and environment. Most POPs have been used as pesticides or are industrial residues; most POPs contaminate animal and human food webs.
24 August 2016 - Press release
A study coordinated by researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and involving 12 groups from across Spain has, for the first time in this country, described the fact that diabetes mellitus not only increases the risk of dying from cardiovascular problems (myocardial infarction, stroke or heart failure), but also significantly increases mortality linked to cancer, infection, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and hepatic and renal illnesses. The results have been published in the prestigious journal Diabetes Care.
Més informació "Diabetes increases the risk of dying from cancer and other diseases"
16/08/2016 - Press release
An international project, The Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC), involving researchers from the IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) as the only Spanish participant, has analysed the DNA that encodes proteins in 60,706 individuals from different ethnic groups and has presented the international scientific community with a catalogue that contains the mutations identified, their frequency and their arrangement on the DNA.The study has been published in the journal Nature and involved the analysis of ten times more individuals than in any previous study. DNA is the molecule within our cells that contains the information for making proteins, in the form of a sequence of four letters or bases [adenine (A), guanine (G ), thymine (T) and cytosine (C)]. In recent years we have developed technologies to sequence, i.e., read the order of these bases in a person's DNA. Changing one of these bases can sometimes alter the protein that the cell makes and lead to illness. For this reason, it is important to know what the normal sequence of bases in DNA is, the frequency of mutations (changes in the sequence of these bases), and where these changes take place, by making a catalogue and map of DNA mutations in humans.
02/08/2016 - Press release
A study including the IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute), the Duke Lemur Center, and Duke University has, for the first time, been looking at gene regulation in hibernating primates. They studied the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius). This is a very little-studied species and exceptional as it is the only primate capable of hibernating, subsisting on the lipids it has stored in its tail over the rest of the year. The project is also one of the few works on hibernation that uses a modern technique known as RNAseq which provides a global view of which genes are expressed and quantifies these. This is the first genomic data on this species.
Més informació "Gene regulation in a hibernating primate studied for the first time"
29/07/2016 - Press release
The prestigious journal PLoS Pathogens has just published an article on the results of the Malaria Box project, an initiative of the Medicines for Malaria Venture that has given free, open access to new families of antimalarial molecules to 200 laboratories from 30 countries. The purpose of the project is to encourage new pharmacological discoveries that make it possible to fight neglected diseases and other illnesses and, for the moment, it has already initiated more than a dozen projects aimed at developing new drugs for various diseases. The Systems Pharmacology research group at the IMIM was the only Catalan participant in this extensive study that also involved three other Spanish centres, in the Basque country (BIOBIDE), Galicia (University of Santiago de Compostela) and Madrid (GlaxoSmithKline R&D).
Més informació "The IMIM takes part in the first major open source drug discovery trial"
28/07/2016 - Press release
Cardiologists at the Hospital del Mar and researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) have developed a new tool that enables them to estimate atrial fibrillation risk using electrocardiogram indicators, basic clinical data, and parameters obtained through Holter monitors (small electronic devices that record and store a patient's electrocardiogram for 24 hours). The results of the project have just been published in the International Journal of Cardiology. Atrial fibrillation is a disease characterised by uncoordinated and disorganised atrial beats that produce a rapid and irregular heart rate. It is estimated that it affects between 1.5 and 2% of people in the developed world and the percentage increases with age.
26/06/2016 - Institutional news
Among the findings, published in the journal eLife, the research has revealed that in South Korea and Iran, where people have shown significant height increases over the last 100 years, Iranian men are now an average of 16.5 cm taller, and South Korean women have increased their height by about 20.2 cm. The study involved the IMIM's Cardiovascular epidemiology and genetics research group that has contributed with 11,000 people from the database of the REGICOR Project and the Clinical and Molecular Epidemiology of Cancer research group
Més informació "IMIM involved in a study of the evolution of global heights over the last 100 years"
20/07/2016 - Press release
Lung cancer is the most deadly cancer in the world, causing more than one and a half million deaths a year. The most common subtype of lung cancer is adenocarcinoma. The presence of other underlying conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is also responsible for a high mortality rate in industrialised regions, increases the risk of developing it. Despite recent progress in therapeutic strategies for combatting this disease, the majority of patients who are diagnosed do not survive for more than five years. It is a cancer that can develop silently for many months and, in some cases, the symptoms can be confused with other diseases, such as the already-mentioned COPD. This is why it is usually diagnosed in very advanced stages. To all these impediments, it is necessary to add the difficulty of finding an appropriate treatment for each patient, since there is a high level of resistance to currently-used drugs.
Més informació "A combination of therapies improves lung cancer treatment"
15/07/2016 - General information
Recently, Dr. Jordi Mestres, coordinator of the Systems Pharmacology research group at the IMIM was elected to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Chemical Probes portal, a free internet-based tool that allows researchers to look for the most appropriate chemical probe for their project, before they start their research.Chemical probes are very small molecules that interact with multiple proteins and they have had a huge impact in biomedical research as, if they are low quality, they can generate erroneous results. Understanding the interactions of these small molecules is key in the development of safer, more efficient drugs.
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