Skip to main content
< Back to news
 02.04.2019

The second edition of IBEC’s Faster Future programme will be dedicated to the fight against Parkinson

The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) ha llançat avui la campanya the Faster Future program campaign “Let’s tackle Parkinson”, which is launched today and will remain open to donations until the 30th of April, has the aim to raise 50,000 € needed to accelerate this research, seeking to obtain favourable results within a year and a half.

 

This year, the programme IBEC Faster Future –an initiative that aims to help accelerate research projects that are close to tackling major challenges in health–  will enable the development of an antibody that will be the base of a therapeutic product for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. This antibody that will be capable of trespassing the blood–brain barrier and will carry a drug to the brain that favours the elimination of lipids stored inside the neurons.

The project is led by Dr. Silvia Muro, Group Leader for Targeted therapeutics and nanodevices group from IBEC, with the collaboration of scientists, hospitals and patient associations, and calls to every person that wants to get involved by making donations during the fundraising campaign.

The causes of Parkinson’s disease are still unknown, and yet it affects around 8 million patients around the world, but the latest studies have demonstrated that the people that suffer this disease have an alteration in the function of eliminating lipids in cells, which means that cells are not capable of getting rid of the “fat residues” and this accumulate inside the cell to the point of provoking its dysfunction or cell death, affecting the central nervous system and causing symptoms such as disturbances in equilibrium and when walking, tremors and muscle stiffness among others.

► More information: IBEC website [+]