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Biotechnology and biomedical research conducted at the PCB included in Consolider projects

By 8 de August de 2006No Comments
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 08.08.2006

Biotechnology and biomedical research conducted at the PCB included in Consolider projects

Researchers at the (IRB) and the (IBEC) are to participate in three of the 17 Consolider projects funded by the Ministry of Education and Science. These projects, a new initiative included in the Ingenio 2010 programme, seek to strengthen top class research in fields of special interest.

One of the three projects, “Nanotechnology in biomedicine”, involving investigators at the IRB and the Nanobioengineering Laboratory, aims to develop a internationally competitive platform in this field. Headed by the Nanoscience Institute of Aragon (INA), the project will address the multidisciplinary study of the use of nanoparticles and nanodevices in therapy and the diagnosis of diseases such as cancer. In addition, this project will also involve groups at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB, University of Barcelona)(IN2UB), the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the University of Santiago de Compostela, the University of Vigo, the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology, the CSIC and several enterprises.

Furthermore, specialists in cell biology, structural biology and bioinformatics at the IRB will collaborate in a study of the cell organelle called the centrosome and its relation with human pathologies such as neurodegenerative diseases, cancer and defects in development derived from deteriorated neuronal migration, among others. Entitled “Centrosome_3D: toward a structural and functional understanding”, this Consolider project is headed by the Centre for Genomic Regulation and involves researchers from ten organisations, among these the National Biotechnology Centre (CBN), the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), the “Severo Ochoa” Centre for Research in Molecular Biology and the universities of Cantabria and Cambridge.

Finally, the project called “Epigenetics: mechanisms and disease” will be developed by researchers in new groups belonging to organisations such as the IRB, CRG, CNIO, University of Valencia and Institute of Cancer Research (IRO), among others. This consortium will apply several experimental approaches in the field of biomedicine that focus on the reversible changes of DNA which cause the expression of some genes but not others in response to external conditions, epigenetics. This field of research is of growing interest because of, mainly, the implication of epigenetic alterations in human diseases, especially in cancer.