26/09/2013 - Press release
Researchers at Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) in Barcelona, in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and other U.S. Institutions, have found that intestinal mucus not only acts as a physical barrier against commensal bacteria and dietary antigens, but also prevents the onset of inflammatory reactions against these agents. This fundamental property of mucus was unknown until now and its discovery could potentially improve the life of people suffering from inflammatory bowel disease. Mucus is a colloidal gel produced by glands present in our mucosal surfaces, including the intestine. "Our body produces on average a liter of mucus every day. Despite its abundance, mucus has been poorly studied and thus very little is known about its composition, synthesis and functional properties. Part of the problem may be that mucus is traditionally viewed as a symbol of disease and thus represents an antivalue" explains Dr. Andrea Cerutti, ICREA Research Professor, coordinator of the research group in B Cell Biology at IMIM, Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai and responsible for the study.
Més informació "Intestinal mucus has anti-inflammatory functions"
19/09/2013 - Press release
Jordi Alonso, director of the Epidemiology and Public Health Programme of the IMIM-Hospital del Mar Research Institute in Barcelona, is the scientific coordinator of the European Study of the Epidemiology of Mental Disorders (ESEMeD), a component of the surveys. Mental disorders are a great burden, for individuals as much as for society. It is therefore important to know the direct costs of offering adequate attention as well as the social cost engendered by not offering it. With this objective the WHO carries out worldwide mental health surveys in order to portray a complete portrait of the situation of mental disorders in the world.
Més informació "Mental disorders are responsible for 17% of disability worldwide"
09/09/2013 - Institutional news
Researchers from the IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) have proven that protein PARP2 plays a key role in maintaining the integrity of the genome of blood stem cells, also known as haematopoietic cells. These results may prove useful to design new drugs and to improve therapeutic strategies based on radiotherapy and chemotherapy. In human cells, cell activities and environmental factors may damage DNA causing up to a million lesions in a cell each day. These lesions can cause mutations that are potentially harmful for the cell’s genome, affecting the survival of “daughter cells”. The haematopoietic system dealing with the formation, development and maturation processes of blood cells is maintained thanks to a small number of stem cells in the bone marrow that are renewed indefinitely during life and lead to the creation of parent cells and all mature blood cells. An appropriate response to the damaged DNA is essential for the normal functioning of these cells and to avoid programmed cell death or the development of diseases such as cancer.
11/07/2013 - Press release
Researchers from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), lead by Lluís Espinosa, have identified a new function of the IkBa protein that is key in the development of squamous-cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer. The study has been published in the prestigious journal Cancer Cell and provides a new tool for the diagnosis of the disease and, in the future, will enable the identification of novel therapeutic targets to treat this type of cancer. Until now, the only known function of the protein IkBa was in the cytoplasm where it inhibits the NF-kB factor, a protein complex that is involved in the immune response. Now we have discovered that in the nucleus of keratinocytes, the typical skin cells, and also in the nucleus of fibroblasts, there is a different form of IkBa that results from its binding to another molecule called Sumo (leading to the Sumo-IkBa protein) that had been previously observed by other groups, but no function had been adscribed.
Més informació "Important advance in the fight against skin cancer"
17/04/2013 - Press release
The Association for International Cancer Research (AICR) has granted Dr. Anna Bigas, coordinator of the IMIM stem cells and cancer research group, 199,867 GBP (231,491 euros) for the three year project “Notch1 and B-Catenin Crosstalk in T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia”, and Dr. Sandra Peiró, investigator for the IMIM epithelial-mesenchymal transition in tumor development research group, 167,495 GBP (193,955 euros) for the project “Heterochromatin reorganization during the EMT process is controlled by Snail1 transcription factor” also due to take place over three years. AICR is a charitable organisation which has for the past 32 years provided funding for investigators with high level cancer research projects, regardless of their country, in order to support basic or translational research into the causes, mechanisms, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of cancer. The Association has a Scientific Advisory Committee which completes a two-yearly selection of projects using strict quality criteria, as only 7 – 8 % of all applications are selected. It is currently supporting 182 ongoing projects around the world.
20/03/2013 - Press release
An international study involving Dr. Ana Giménez Arnau, a dermatologist at the Hospital del Mar and researcher with the group conducting research on inflammatory dermatological diseases at the IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) has concluded that a drug normally used to treat severe bronchial asthma caused by allergies (Omalizumab) rapidly eliminates the symptoms of spontaneous chronic urticaria, a development that it is expected will significantly improve the quality of life of chronic urticaria sufferers. Spontaneous chronic urticaria, one of the most common skin diseases, consists of an abrupt reaction that results in hives or stains of different shapes and sizes on the surface of the skin that grow and produce a very intense itch. Sufferers can develop dozens of hives each day for months or years. When the condition persists for more than 6 weeks, it is referred to as chronic urticaria and can last between approximately 5 and 10 years, adversely affecting the quality of life of the sufferer in both physical and emotional terms. The research, which has consisted of an international Phase III clinical trial conducted across several centres of research, has run for 7 months and involved 323 patients from different countries. These patients have an average age of 42 and for the most part are women (76%), a description that accurately reflects the profile of patients with chronic urticaria.
Més informació "A step forward in the treatment of chronic urticaria"
26/02/2013 - Press release
The Patient-Reported Outcomes (PRO) have become significant health and quality of life indicators in clinical and epidemiological research. The health reported by patients has such an important predictive power as mortality, services demand and health costs. BiblioPRO is the first virtual library in the world specialized in these health-related quality of life instruments, the PROs, in Spanish, classified and documented following a conceptual and rigorous classification form. It includes instruments designed originally in Spanish, as well as cultural adaptations developed by Spain and Latin America, because most of these instruments have been carried out in English-speaking countries. BiblioPRO has been developed by the research group on health services of IMIM, who have been the organizers of the I Jornada Científica BiblioPRO
14/02/2013 - Press release
The vice-chancellors of three Catalan universities and representatives of ten biological and biomedical research institutes, together with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and BioCat, this morning signed an agreement to create Bioinformatics Barcelona (BiB), a platform which it is hoped will turn the Barcelona area into an international point of reference in the field of bioinformatics through cooperation between universities, centres of research, and other public and private entities.
05/02/2013 - Press release
The research group has a long experience in the field of addictions, in the 90s established at the Hospital del Mar one of the first metadone prescribing and dispensing programmes integrated into a drug treatment center, being a national and international reference in the implementation of this treatment. Spain’s provision of methadone maintenance treatment for heroin dependence, combined with the distribution of sterile injecting equipment and access to treatment for AIDS, has led to a turnaround in the country’s HIV epidemic, according to a study published this month in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Spain’s experience in this area is relevant to other countries where illicit drug injection is a common problem, such as those in eastern Europe and central, southern and eastern Asia
Més informació "Heroin dependence treatment reduces HIV infections in Spain"
31/01/2013 - Press release
Researchers from the group on stem cells and cancer at IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) have deciphered one of the gene regulation circuits which would make it possible to generate hematopoietic blood cells, i.e. blood tissue stem cells. This finding is essential to generate these cells in a laboratory in the future, a therapy that could benefit patients with leukaemia or other diseases who need a transplant and who, in many cases, do not have a compatible donor. The study was developed over 4 years and consisted in performing a large number of experiments with the collaboration of groups from Japan, Holland and the USA. On the one hand, researchers identified the mechanism regulating the gene GATA2 in hematopoietic stem cells of a mouse embryo and, on the other hand, they identified DNA sequences regulating this gene; i.e. the sequences of gene GATA2 where the Notch protein and the repressor HES-1 bind.
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