08/10/2019 - Press release
Based on a study of 566 drugs that interact with 129 different proteins, researchers from the Systems Pharmacology research group, part of the GRIB Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics, a joint programme between the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), in collaboration with researchers from the University of New Mexico, in the United States, realised that 71% of drugs have stronger affinities for their target proteins than those of the small internal molecules responsible for regulating their functions. Surprisingly, this is the first time that the affinities of endogenous ligands and drugs for the same proteins have been quantified. Humans have thousands of proteins, each with a specific function that is often regulated by thousands of small molecules synthesised by our bodies. This set of small molecules, also known as "endogenous metabolites", is known as the "human metabolome". Each one interacts with its native protein with a certain affinity that has been carefully optimised, in a natural way, throughout the long process of evolution, and this can vary between species and even in some instances, more subtly, between individuals.
Més informació "Our own bodies hold the key to designing safer drugs"
13/05/2019 - Events
BSC, UPC and IMIM organize the first Advances in Computational Biology conference will bring together researchers working on systems biology, omics technologies, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) with applications to biology from both the public and the private sectors. The conference will be held November 28-29 in La Pedrera (Barcelona). Maria Jose Rementeria, Social Link Analytics group leader at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) and one of the organizers, states: "One of the main purposes of the conference is to visualize and promote the research done by women scientists and for this reason all presenters will be women, although the conference is open to everyone. We want to create a space to foster collaborations between scientists, providing a unique opportunity to share ideas and build research networks".
Més informació "A conference to promote women's research in computational biology"
09/05/2019 - General information
The GRIB Integrative Biomedical Informatics group (IMIM-UPF) has launched a new version of DisGeNET, a public knowledge management platform on the genomics of disease, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. DisGeNET offers information on genes and genomic variants associated with human diseases, which is obtained by integrating more than a dozen public resources and the scientific literature. DisGeNET contains one of the most comprehensive collections of genes and variants associated with human diseases that is currently available. The new version of DisGeNET (6.0) contains approximately 600,000 associations between more than 17,000 genes and 24,000 human diseases, focusing particularly on genetic alterations associated with disease: this version includes more than 117,000 genomic variants associated with 10,000 diseases. In addition, the phenotypic landscape covered by DisGeNET has been expanded to include the genomic basis of clinical manifestations of diseases, both signs and symptoms, as well as laboratory tests results.
Més informació "New version of DisGeNET 6.0 and ELIXIR recognition"
10/04/2019 - General information
The project EOSC-Life aims to create an open collaborative digital space for life science in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). EOSC-Life brings together the 13 european research infrastructures in the Health and Food domain of the ESFRI Roadmap and is funded by H2020 for the period 2019-2023. The project involves research groups from 46 European academic institutions. These include the GRIB Systems Pharmacology research group (IMIM-UPF) led by Jordi Mestres, which is helping develop collaborative tools for integrating and analysing all kinds of data in the field of life sciences.
11/07/2018 - Press release
Researchers led by Emre Guney of the research programme on Biomedical Informatics (GRIB), a joint programme of Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) and the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), have developed a new computational method to reuse drugs that target biological pathways common to more than one disease. A significant percentage of marketed drugs are not effective in patients due to the complexity of the biological processes involved in diseases and genetic differences between people. Despite recent technological advances, the discovery of new effective treatments takes a long time and continues to be expensive. For this reason, the reuse of medicines, i.e., the use of existing drugs for other diseases, is a very interesting alternative to reduce the costs of drug development.
Més informació "A new computational method for exploring the reuse of drugs"
10/07/2018 - Institutional news
On June 8th, Dr Jordi Mestres, coordinator of the IMIM Systems Pharmacology Research Group, was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry of the United Kingdom. Achieving this status is an important milestone in a researcher's career as it indicates scientific quality and is one of the most important recognitions a chemist can receive. The Royal Society of Chemistry is a non-profit organisation that is more than 175 years old and has more than 54,000 members across the world. Its aim is to advance excellence in the chemical sciences, investing in the education of future generations, creating and maintaining standards, encouraging innovation, and advising governments.
Més informació "Jordi Mestres elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry"
07/06/2018 - General information
Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) continues to be a major public health challenge, accounting for about 20% of all natural deaths in industrialised countries. Although there has been a substantial decline in overall coronary heart disease mortality rates in the past 30 years, SCA rates have fallen to a lesser extent. Some 50 % of all cardiovascular deaths are caused by SCA, a condition in which the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. With survival rates ranging between 5 % and 20 %, there's a need to improve SCA prevention and treatment. To address this issue, a European public-private consortium is now working on the creation of a joint, harmonised database by analysing SCA victims and DNA samples, along with detailed clinical and medication use information. unded by H2020 Programme of the European Union, the team of scientists contributing to the ESCAPE-NET project, including the System Pharmacology group of GRIB (IMIM-UPF) led by Jordi Mestres, summarised the objectives of their research in the 'European Heart Journal'.
19/04/2018 - Institutional news
The 3rd European Conference on Translational Bioinformatics (ECTB2018) was held on April 16th-17th at the premises of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) with the attendance of more than 130 European scientists, developers, and entrepreneurs, interested in translating genomics and bioinformatics research into healthcare tools and services. The conference aimed to give the participants a unique experience and a forum for discussing fresh scientific results in the translational domain. The conference brought together world-leading scientists in the area which highlighted on their presentations the recent advances in information technologies that are facilitating translational research and precision medicine. Some of the topics addressed were Big Data integration and analysis, Personalized Medicine, Genome Sequencing initiatives, etc, delivered by scientists from Europe, Canada and the USA.
06/03/2018 - Press release
The Evolutionary Genomics research group at the IMIM, led by Mar Albà, has just published an article in the journal Molecular Ecology providing the results of a study that has identified which genes participate (change their expression) in the hibernation state of hairy-eared dwarf lemurs, which belong to the only group of primates that has the ability to hibernate. These small mammals store fats in their tails, allowing them to survive the months of shortage, and which they use as fuel during hibernation. Hibernation is a response to the lack of resources we normally associate with winter, but which can occur in other conditions of scarcity, such as in desert areas or, for example, during the dry season in Madagascar. “The genes involved in hibernation are present in almost all mammals, including humans. It is a question of when and how they are expressed that makes the phenomenon of hibernation possible. As they are primates, lemur genes are relatively similar to those in humans, so it is even more interesting to study this species”, explains José Luis Villanueva-Cañas, a researcher from the IMIM's Evolutionary Genomics group.
Més informació "First genetic study of primate hibernation in their natural environment"
15-01-2018 - General information
The Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (FDA/CDER) and Chemotargets will work together under a 5-year Research Collaboration Agreement (RCA). The primary objective of the research agreement will be to assess the utility and performance of the Chemotargets CLARITY® intelligence & discovery platform to predict on-target and off-target activities using known pharmacology and safety data from experimental studies of small molecular entities. Evaluating in silico models for broad pharmacological profiling is of interest to CDER to predict potential adverse events of drugs in development. Additionally, insight into a chemical’s molecular target profile can help predict abuse and addiction potential, which may reduce risks associated with exposure to these substances.
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