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Researchers Roger Torrent and Adriana Sànchez of the IBUB win the 6th edition of «Fotorecerca»

By 18 de December de 2013No Comments
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 18.12.2013

Researchers Roger Torrent and Adriana Sànchez of the IBUB win the 6th edition of «Fotorecerca»

The jury´s decision of the 6th edition of the «Fotorecerca» awards, a photography contest organized annually by the Parc Científic de Barcelona, to show the research being conducted through an artistic view, was made public today. This year's winning photograph «A busy neuronal network» was presented by Roger Torrent and Adriana Sànchez Danès, predoctoral researchers at the Stem Cells and Neural Plasticity Laboratory of the Institute of Biomedicine University of Barcelona ( IBUB), headed by Dr. Antonella Consiglio. Postdoctoral researchers Anna Lladó and Lídia Bardia from the Scientific Advanced Digital Microscopy Platform at IRB Barcelona, led by Dr. Julien Colombelli, obtained the second prize for the image «Art-zheimer Brain". The awards ceremony - a digital camera for the winning photograph, which will also be used as this year´s PCB´s Christmas greeting image, and a photography book for the second prize - will take place tomorrow Friday at 13.00 hrs at the intersection point between the Torres R+I+D building.


Entitled «A busy neural network», the winning photograph of the first prize –a SX170 Canon digital camera –shows the generation of plaque neurons from induced human pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). iPSCs, generated for the first time in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka (Nobel Prize for Medicine 2012), offer a unique opportunity to recapitulate in vitro phenotype expression in human tissues from both healthy individuals and sick patients, and are very useful for the study of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or Huntington’s disease. In vitro disease modelling opens the door to the development of strategies for the treatment and prevention of these diseases where early diagnosis is crucial. The photograph was obtained with a confocal microscope (Leica TCS – SP5), using a 20x lens.

«Art- zheimer Brai», the image awarded with the second prize, shows the brain of a mouse brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. In order to see inside, the brain was dehydrated with methanol and made optically transparent. Images were acquired using a light plane that was swept on the brain from different angles. The device used is the MacroSPIM, a last-generation system built at the Advanced Digital Microscopy Scientific Platform at IRB Barcelona that allows acquiring 3D images of whole organs (not dissected). Labeled areas correspond to: Alzheimer’s plaques in white, blood vessels and tissue contour coded in different colors depending on how deep they are located within the brain. The samples were provided by researchers Enrico Radaelli and Sebastian Munck, from KU Leuven.

Forty three photographs, taken by personnel from the different research institutes, companies, technology platforms and other organizations located within the Parc Científic de Barcelona, were submitted to the call. The selection of the winners was carried out by a multidisciplinary panel composed of institutional representatives of the PCB and scientific communication specialists, graphic designers and photographers, who assessed originality, artistic and technical quality, visual impact and scientific content. In addition to the winners of the first and second prize, the three other finalists were: «Eclipse» by Maria Marsal, IBMB-CSIC researcher; «On the Groove» by Daniel Blasi, researcher at the PCB Drug Discovery Platform; and «Heart Galaxy» by Claudia Di Guglielmo, researcher at IBEC. All submitted photographs will be displayed on plasma screens at the reception areas of the Cluster and the Torres R+I+D building.