28/07/2020 - Covid-19
The main goal of the European project EHDEN: European Health Data & Evidence Network, is to carry out large-scale analysis of European clinical data (Real-World Clinical Data), using bioinformatics tools and standards based on the international OHDSI initiative and the OMOP common date model (CDM). EHDEN will speed up studies and research related to characterising patients with COVID-19 and other diseases, and evaluate the best treatments and clinical management for these patients, using millions of clinical records from all over Europe.
24/07/2020 - Institutional news
In the first edition of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in Health Awards organised by ISCIII and promoted as part of the European project ORION (Open Responsible research and Innovation to further Outstanding kNowledge) three proposals from three different Health Research Institutes (HRI) have been honoured out of a total of 26 proposals received. One of these three proposals is an IMIM project: The name of the successful project is "Co-creation and citizen participation in the design of the PENSA Study on the Prevention of Cognitive Impairment in People with Subjective Memory Complaints". Presented by Natàlia Soldevila and Laura Forcano from the Integrated Pharmacology and Systems Neuroscience research group at the IMIM, this work stands out for its application of citizen participation in the design of a clinical trial, an added value that allows the project to be reoriented to better adapt to the needs and expectations of the participants.
24/07/2020 - Press release
One simple call to go over colonoscopy preparation instructions 48 hours before an appointment increases test success by 11.5%. This has been demonstrated in a multi-centre study led by doctors and nurses from the Digestive Tract Service at Hospital del Mar and researchers from the Clinical and Translational Research Group on Colorectal Neoplasia at the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM). The work, published in the journal Endoscopy, analysed data from 657 patients from 11 Spanish hospitals. This is the first multi-centre study to analyse how an educational approach can improve colon preparation in people at high risk of not achieving this.
14/07/2020 - Press release
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRS) are one of the key elements mediating basic stimuli like our response to mosquito bites or to this last-minute goal scored by our favorite football team. In fact, these proteins are the target of almost 40% of the currently approved drugs. However, until now, researchers did not have access to a tool employing molecular simulations to achieve a better understanding of GPCR function. Therefore, a consortium of researchers from 23 different institutions of 10 different European countries and the United States have joined forces to design and build a tool that will help improve our understanding of the function of these receptors, which are responsible of transmitting signals to the interior of cells. The GPCRmd platform is the result of this work, lead and coordinated by the GPCR Drug Discovery group from the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB) of the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), the Pompeu Fabra University, and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, with support from the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
08/07/2020 - Press release
Cannabis use can lead to behavioral changes, including reduced social interactions in some individuals. To better understand the phenomenon, Inserm researcher Giovanni Marsicano and his team from NeuroCenter Magendie (Inserm/Université de Bordeaux), in collaboration with University of Salamanca (Spain) professor, Juan P Bolaños and his team, have identified for the first time in mice the cerebral mechanisms underlying the relationship between cannabis and reduced sociability. Their findings have been published in Nature. Dr. Arnau Busquets, currently a Ramon y Cajal researcher in the IMIM's Integrated Pharmacology and Systems Neuroscience Research Group is one of the first authors of this work. He has been responsible for carrying out the in vivo part of the project in mice, during his postdoctoral period in Dr. Marsicano's team in Bordeaux. Dr. Busquets started his own group last September (https://www.imim.cat/programesrecerca/neurociencies/grfh/cell-type_mechanisms_in_normal_and_pathological_behavior/index.htm)
Més informació "Star-Shaped Brain Cells Shed Light on the Link Between Cannabis Use and Sociability"
30/06/2020 - General information
The successful projects are "Obtaining antioxidant active substances from the carob pod and validating their therapeutic potential", which involves the company Euronutra, the IBIMA (Malaga Biomedical Research Institute), the IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute), and the CRG (Centre for Genomic Regulation); and the project "Development of a new therapy for Fragile X syndrome", in which the company Connecta Therapeutics, the IMIM, and the CRG are participating. The Spanish Innovation Agency call for these grants is part of the State Plan for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2017-2020. The goal is to finance cooperative projects between companies and research bodies in order to carry out joint R&D projects that are close to the market and that, due to their subject matter, are aligned with the priorities established in the challenges of the State R&D Programme Oriented to the Challenges of Society. This year's call has a budget of 260 million euros and one of the requirements is that the coordinator applying for the grant must be a company.
29/06/2020 - General information
This month Sifted, the technology magazine of the Financial Times, has contacted various experts in the technology industry and in analyzing data on investments, has concluded that the Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem has high quality healthtech startups, ranging from drug discovery to novel virtual reality therapies. In its latest edition, Sifted has published a list of the top healthcare start-ups in Spain, including Chemotargets, the IMIM's spin-off founded in 2006 by Dr. Jordi Mestres, coordinator of the Systems Pharmacology research group at IMIM. Chemotargets is a company that offers state-of-the-art methodologies with predictive capabilities that allow the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry to accelerate the design and optimization of drug candidates and improve cost efficiency and safety. Its CLARITY® platform covers the entire field of drug discovery and development, from the de novo design of molecules for new targets to pharmacovigilance in the drug market stage.
25/06/2020 - General information
Dr. Ferran Sanz, Dra. Laura Furlong and Dr. Baldo Oliva of the IMIM Biomedical Informatics Research Program, participate in the Disc4All project: Training network to advance integrated computational simulations in translational medicine, applied to intervertebral disc degeneration, coordinated by Jérôme Noailly, principal investigator in the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology research area at BCN MedTech of UPF. It is one of the ten selected projects in Catalonia as an Innovative Training Network (ITN) Marie Sklodowska-Curie, in the European Commission's ITN MSC Actions call. The European innovative training networks (ITN) aim to train a new generation of researchers in their early stages who are creative, enterprising and innovative, capable of dealing with the challenges of the future and turn knowledge and ideas into products and services with an economic and a social benefit.
16/06/2020 - General information
A study conducted by researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and the Affinity Foundation Chair at the UAB has concluded that companion animals have been an important source of emotional support for people during confinement. This benefit was greater the more the person has suffered from the confinement. The study also found that lockdown can have negative consequences for the animals. Specifically, dogs have shown more signs of nervousness and frustration, and may have trouble adjusting to their usual routine after confinement. Cats may have been exposed to excessive handling by the people they live with, which can lead to stress and adaptation problems. In short, as people we still do not really understand the language of our animals, and we have not translated their real needs adequately.
15/06/2020 - Covid-19
The MARBiobanc of the PSMAR has so far collected more than 2000 samples from 623 COVID-19 patients. In addition, it has follow-up samples -obtained at different times of the clinical evolution of the disease- from 40% of the cases. These samples are difficult to obtain and provide new opportunities for research projects linked to patient evolution (prognosis, biomarkers of evolution, sequelae, etc.). It should be noted that all the samples were collected in strict compliance with the ethical and legal standards set out in the Biomedical Research Act. MARBiobanc pioneered the systematic collection of COVID-19 samples, starting on April 1, thanks to its close coordination with the clinical services at Hospital del Mar and its collaboration with the Catalan Reference Laboratory, which is a node integrated into MARBiobanc.
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