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PhD student Jesús Ordoño (Photo: IBEC).
 10.05.2018

IBEC PhD student receives Daniel Bravo scholarship

Jesús Ordoño, PhD student at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), based in the Barcelona Science Park, is one of just three winners in the 2018 call by the Daniel Bravo Andreu Private Foundation grants, which aims to to stimulate high impact biomedical research in Catalonia with scholarships to researchers (in possession of a doctorate, bachelor’s degree or equivalent) who carry out their activity in Catalonia and who wish to make short stays at leading centres in their field in North America or Europe.

 

Jesús Ordoño is a doctoral student ain the Biomaterials for Regenerative Therapies group at IBEC. “In the last couple of years I’ve demonstrated for the first time that lactate is able to modulate the microenvironment of the postnatal heart, promoting the regeneration of the cardiac tissue,” Jesús explains. “This finding could provide a new strategy to cure the cardiac muscle after an injury such as heart attack.”

In addition to basic and clinical research, this year the Daniel Bravo Grants will focus special attention on cardiovascular imaging and non-invasive diagnostic techniques. The felloships grant a monthly stipend plus travel expenses for researcher to stay in some of the most prestigious centers in the world.

Ordoño will work at Michigan State University’s Institute for Quantitative Health Science & Engineering (IQ) on a project entitled “Elucidation of the mechanisms and signaling pathways of lactate on cardiac regeneration”.His group leader there will be IBEC alumnus Aitor Aguirre, who’s now Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering.

His stay with Dr. Aguirre, who has extensive experience in human stem cells and metabolism, will enhance this line of research by diluting and characterizing the signaling pathways through which lactate can promote cardiac regeneration.