21/04/2015 - Press release
Researchers at the Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) have identified a new way of treating colorectal cancer. In the study published in the journal Science Signaling, the team led by LLuís Espinosa, investigator of IMIM's research group into stem cells and cancer, have shown that inhibition of endosomal activity is a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of cancers with the BRAF mutated gene. This discovery is an important step in the personalisation of the treatment of colorectal cancer, as the presence of this mutation is associated with an increased resistance compared to standard therapies. Researchers from IDIBELL - the Catalan Institute of Oncology - and the Hospital de Bellvitge also participated.
19/02/2015 - Press release
Researchers at IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) have applied a new computational methodology to anticipate the degree of selectivity of the molecules that are used to study protein functions and reduce the risk of establishing erroneous relations between proteins and diseases. The proteins under study could be future candidates for new therapeutic targets. The study is published in the prestigious journal ACS Chemical Biology and was selected for the cover. Molecules are essential tools for exploring protein functions, as they have the capacity to activate, inhibit and modulate their function. For many years, in order to explore protein functions, namely to know their biological role, small molecules known as 'chemical probes' have been used, which interact with the protein under study, to become a possible candidate as a new therapeutic target. However, in order for them to be truly useful, these molecules must selectively interact with the protein under study. ‘Until now, it was assumed that these chemical probes only and exclusively interacted with the protein that was being studied, so that any variations in the results of experiments were interpreted as the consequence of the selective interaction of the chemical probe with the protein under study’ comments Jordi Mestres, coordinator of the Research Group in Systems Pharmacology at the Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB per its Spanish acronym) at IMIM and the UPF.
Més informació "The promiscuity of chemical probes discovered"
28/01/2015 - General information
The project iPIE: Intelligence Led Assessment of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment starts on February 2015 with a kick off meeting at Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) and the participation of the GRIB research groups of Integrative Biomedical Informatics (IBI) and PharmacoInformatics (PhI) of Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM)) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF). It is often ignored that any drug administered to human patients ends up in the environment, either in the original form or as a mixture of drug metabolites. Testing the environmental impact of novel drug candidates is therefore important in order to early discard potentially dangerous ones. With a budget of 10.2 million euros and a duration of 4 years, the project iPIE aims to develop a predictive framework that utilise existing information and in silico models to support more intelligent environmental testing of pharmaceuticals in development and to prioritise legacy pharmaceuticals for full environmental risk assessment and/or environmental (bio) monitoring.
Més informació "Project iPIE: Testing the environmental impact of drugs"
17/12/2014 - Institutional news
As of January 1st, Dr. Rosa Ventura will be the new director of the Anti-Doping Control Laboratory at IMIM, replacing Dr. Jordi Segura who, after 30 years, is leaving the post to retire. However, until July 2016, Dr. Segura will remain at the Laboratory part-time supporting research and any other need that may arise. Since 1985, when the Laboratory gained accreditation from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and later on from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Dr. Segura has been at the helm of the Laboratory, with a clear priority right from the start, that is to high quality and reliable services. A Laboratory that has been in charge of controls for important sports events such as the Barcelona Olympics and Paralympics in 1992; the Pan American Games in Havana in 1991; in Mar de Plata in 1995 and Mexico 2011; The Asian Games in Bangkok in 1998, or the FINA World Swimming Championships held in Barcelona in 2003 and 2013, as some of the most relevant ones. The Lab also collaborated in anti-doping controls for the Olympics during the past 25 years.
Més informació "Rosa Ventura is the new director of the Anti-Doping Control Laboratory at IMIM"
2/12/2014 - Press release
With the goal of promoting the safety of patients and the quality of healthcare in Europe, the European Commission, sponsored by the Italian Presidency, has organised a meeting in Rome on 2nd and 3rd December with the participation of healthcare experts, researchers, politicians and international journalists, to discuss, from different perspectives, how to promote the quality of medical healthcare through healthcare systems and how to improve security in hospitals. IMIM’s project is the only one selected from Spain. The meeting will focus on communicating the results of some projects funded through the EU Healthcare Programme and the impact on the daily lives of Europeans. From all projects submitted, only 8 have been selected in several areas, one of them being the EURHOBOP Project (EURopean Hospital Benchmarking by Outcomes in acute coronary syndrome Processes), coordinated by Dr. Jaume Marrugat, a researcher from the research group on cardiovascular epidemiology and genetics at IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute).
18/11/2014 - General information
The platform for the analysis of human diseases and their genes DisGeNET, developed by the Integrative Biomedical Informatics research group at GRIB (IMIM-UPF) appears for the first time in the Linking Open Data (LOD) linking diagram. This type of diagram shows sets of data in Linked Data format, which is used by the World Wide Web to link structured and related data. Linked Data is the best way to showcase, share and connect data, information and knowledge on the semantic web through technologies such as Uniform Resource Identifiers (or URIs, web resource identifiers) andResource Description Framework (or RDF, a model to represent information in a structured way).
Més informació "DisGeNET included in the Linking Open Data (LOD) diagram"
13/11/2014 - Press release
A study by the international consortium The Myocardial Infarction Genetics (MIGen) with the participation of researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) has analysed the genetic characteristics in more than 110,000 people and has identified, for the first time, 15 mutations in gene NPC1L1. The existence of any of these mutations has been associated to a reduction in the levels of LDL cholesterol or “bad cholesterol” as well as protecting against the risk of having an acute myocardial infarction. The results are published on-line in the prestigious journal The New England Journal of Medicine.
10/10/2014 - Institutional news
The Science and Innovation Ministry through the Science and TechnologySpanish Foundation launched last October 9 at the headquarters of the Carlos III Institute thePrecipita platform, designed to promote special interesting projects to be funded through micro-patronage (crowdfunding), small contributions from individuals. One of the selected projects presented is Brainful Legends, a videogame for cognitive stimulation, science-based, modern, funny and, above all, accessible to all people with intellectual disabilities.
Més informació "Precipita platform presentation and the video game Brainful Legends"
17/09/2014 - Press release
Researchers in Biomedical Informatics at IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) and at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) have recently published a study in eLife showing that RNA called non-coding (IncRNA) plays an important role in the evolution of new proteins, some of which could have important cell functions yet to be discovered. Ribosomes produce proteins from the instructions found in an RNA molecule. However, only 2% of the human genome is RNA containing information for the synthesis of proteins, meaning it is coding. Other parts of the genome that are transcribed could be “evolutionary noise”, parts of the DNA that are copied to RNA randomly but with no concrete biological function. Now, a new sequencing technique has revealed that many of these transcripts (IncRNAs) may also translate into proteins, leading to an intense debate.
09/09/2014 - Press release
Mental disorders and brain disease represent a high cost in Europe and around the world. Researchers from IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) have recently published in the PLOS ONE journal the results of a study that estimates that the cost of disorders of the brain in Spain is the equivalent of 84 billion Euros per year. This figure is far higher than the Spanish expenditure in health, which was 73 billion Euros in 2012. When referring to the cost of a disease, this not only includes the direct health cost – resources used for primary healthcare, specialised care, hospital stays, medication, preventive programmes, etc. –but also direct non-medical costs of these disorders and diseases –for instance, the cost of carers –and the indirect costs or potential loss of productivity for death, permanent or temporary disability, lost or decreased leisure, etc. For this study, a group of nineteen disorders and diseases of the brain were included, encompassing neurological diseases –dementia, epilepsy, headache, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, strokes and neuromuscular diseases – and also mental diseases –anxiety disorders, humour disorders and psychotic disorders – to reach a global and individual estimate of their impact.
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